Ohtsuka Requested to be Posted

How good is this guy? I'm asking in terms of stuff, not his numbers

Peggy, You will find out how good his stuff is after his first year in the U.S. majors. He might be good, he might not be, you'll just have to wait and see.

I'm asking in terms of stuff, not his numbers

Isn't one indicative of the other? Ohtsuka has a career ERA of 2.45, not to mention a 1.05 WHIP. Whatever his stuff is, it seems to be working. That said, I'm curious, too. Does anyone know what he throws? Fastball, curve, slider, splitter, etc.? And what about velocity?

Otsuka has been clocked as high as 94mph, though
I believe he tends to throw more consistently in the
high 80s low 90s. His main out pitch is a slider with a
lot of downward movement on it (as opposed to a slider with a lot of horizontal movement, which is more common perhaps) plus he is reputed to have an excellent
changeup. He has aquired a forkball with the tutelage of Koki Morita after initially trying the pitch out in college and not being able to get a handle on it. His control numbers this season have been outstanding. But he has also had injury problems, too the last three or four years. The Dodgers want to use him as a setup man
for Gagne, though Otsuka's experience as a closer could enable them to use Gagne more sparingly than they did this season. He will be one of the more intriguing stories among the lesser known players from Japan coming to MLB in 2003.

By the way, anyone want to bet on whether Hiroshi Takamura even makes it out of spring traning with an
MLB team next season? I say he won't.

Does anyone know who else from the Far East is a likely candidate to come over (either as a free agent or because their teams post them)? So far, the only info I have is from Gammons' column on ESPN, refering to Otsuka, Jae Hong Park from Korea, and Kazuo Matsui. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Several questions: are the Buffaloes likely to agree to his request? If so, why would they give up such an effective pitcher (is his contract up, is he disruptive, is the team strapped for money, is he injury prone, etc.) when my understanding is in most of these cases they could hang on to him for 2 or 3 more years?

Several questions: are the Buffaloes likely to agree to his request? If so, why would they give up such an effective pitcher (is his contract up, is he disruptive, is the team strapped for money, is he injury prone, etc.) when my understanding is in most of these cases they could hang on to him for 2 or 3 more years?

The Buffaloes have already agreed. The reason is mostly money, I imagine. The Buffaloes have not been in the best financial straits the past couple of years. Plus, why keep a guy on your team that doesn't want to be there? The Japanese teams have been surprisingly agreeable to posting their players. Seibu agreed to post Kazuo Matsui last year if he wanted to go, Orix posted Ichiro, and Yakult posted Ishii. The only case that I think of where the team refused to post a player was Hanshin and Kawajiri. If I had to guess why, I'd say it may have been because they didn't expect to get much for him...

Actually, both the Cardinals and Astros went to the Japanese commissioner's office asking about Kawajiri's
availablity. The reason they wanted to hold on to him
was that Hanshin just was not very deep in starting pitching. You had Igawa and Moore and then cross your fingers. Ando was a huge disappointment.

I'm still mystified as to why Kawajiri didn't start the regular season at ichigun. I surmise that the team's officials wanted to punish him (see foot, now aim carefully, bang!) for being so vocal in the press about wanting to be posted by leaving him in the minors. What a bunch of ninnies. Anyway, the last couple of months, he has had one strong performance after another. Also, ironically, Taiyo Fujita is now beginning to round into shape and Kyuji Fujikawa has had his moments. So they can go into next season feeling pretty good about that. Now they just need to fix that bullpen and improve their hitting with RISP. Letting Itoh, Carlyle, and Yuminaga go is a good start.

Thanks for the info, Gary. It's no surprise Hanshin has been cellar-dwellers the past years with management like that. You've got a player that doesn't want to be there, you have the opportunity to get some money for him, you make a possibly justifiable decision to keep him because of your lack of depth, and then you stick him in the minors for saying he doesn't want to be there. Hanshin, Kansas City, and Milwaukee should get together and have an International Bad Baseball Management convention...

Any word yet whether the Buffaloes will post Ohtsuka or not?

It's a done deal. And he may be a Yankee before the new year.!!

Where did you hear he was going to the Yankees? It was reported that NO MLB teams put a bid in for him. This must be quite a shock to Ohtsuka's ego.

- It's a done deal.

What are you talking about? Matsui will be a Yankee, but no MLB team bid on Ohtsuka [Daily Yomiuri].

I got bad sources. My bad.