Jared Fernadez

Rob Smaal at the Asahi-Herald has an interesting article up about Hiroshima's new knuckleballer, Jered Fernandez. It discusses his bouncing between AAA and the Majors, and has Fernandez recalling an incident in Cincinnati:

"When I was pitching for the Reds, Jason LaRue missed seven (knuckleballs) in a row at one point in a game against the (Arizona) Diamondbacks," Fernandez said Thursday at the Carp's spring training camp in Miyazaki. "I threw the eighth one and he caught it and the crowd went nuts, but (Reds manager) Bob Boone came out and said, 'LaRue's had enough ... give me the righty.' So I got yanked and moved to the bullpen because of LaRue.

"After that, (LaRue) wouldn't even try. I got these big catcher's gloves for him but he just said, 'I don't even want to play catch with you.' The day after the seven passed balls, I bought him some hockey gear, just for fun, but Barry Larkin was like, 'You can't do that, he's a veteran.' "

Fernandez says that he's been trying to come to Japan for a number of years now, and was very excited when he heard that a Japanese team was interested in him.

Brown-kantoku is glad to have Fernandez's services, despite the "crap shoot" of sending a knuckleballer to the mound. In fact, he was expecting management to say no to the idea of a nuckleballer, but instead got, "Sure, that's pretty cool!"

It'll be interesting to see how Fernandez does this season for the Carp.