Igawa posts
DMZ · November 10, 2006 at 4:17 pm · Filed Under General baseball
From the Yomiuri Shimbum, lefty pitcher Kei Igawa is going to be posted.
Igawa’s not going to attract nearly the crazed interest of Daisuke, on account of he’s not nearly as good. Still, in this pitching-starved market, someone’s going to toss some cash at him.
Igawa allowed two runs (and walked six) pitching against the traveling MLB team on Tuesday.
So where do you think Igawa fits in the Matsuzaka/Schmidt/Zito/Suppan/Weaver/Redman spectrum of free agent pitchers?
For those of us not familiar with Japanese baseball, who would be his most comparable pitcher were he to come to the bigs?
2. He’s supposed to have a good change-up and an OK fastball–a young Kenny Rogers at best, Jarrod Washburn at worst.
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Sounds like someone the Mariners would LOOOOVE to sign to a 5 year deal 🙁
this is a real yawn compared to the big prize but I guess it can never hurt to have a deeper pool to chose from in the market….
sounds like Kaz Ishii v2
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Where would Igawa sit on the spectrum of free agents? I’d think somewhere around the $5m/year guys. As someone who might put up 200 decent innings, he’s not without value, but I can’t see anyone getting frothed up about him in the way they can about, say, Zito-Schmidt-etc, and I wonder if the timing’s going to hurt interest: most teams who are looking for pitching are probably going to want to see if they can’t get someone better before they shop for the Igawa-level guys.
So if Matsuzaka is worth $38-45M, this guy should bring a posting fee of 15 or 20, right?
If I remember right, Japanese pitcher other than Matsuzaka were discussed at the feed, and none of them seemed to be something you’d really want.
It’s not linear. If he attracts much interest at all, it’ll be a couple million. I’d be shocked if it got past $10m. I think interested teams will be around.. 5?
Kei Igawa
2004 200.1IP, 190H, 29HR, 228K, 54BB, 3.73ERA
2005 172.1IP, 199H, 23HR, 145K, 60BB, 3.86ERA
2006 209.0IP, 180H, 17HR, 194K, 49BB, 2.97ERA
Kazu Ishii
1999 133.0IP, 123H, 16HR, 162K, 71BB, 4.80ERA
2000 183.0IP, 137H, 15HR, 210K, 73BB, 2.61ERA
2001 175.0IP, 135H, 18HR, 173K, 82BB, 3.39ERA
2006 177.2IP, 177H, 16HR, 170K, 59BB, 3.44ERA
Bobby Madritsch.
Should people be worried about a guy who threw 200 innings in Japan? Don’t they only play 130 games over there? I would think that’s about 6 less starts a year meaning that the guy was probably getting well over the magical 100 pitch mark frequently.
Yeah, they throw more CGs in Japan.
A name thrown around in comparison to Igawa is Gil Meche, which I don’t think is fair, as Igawa appears to show better control (the 6 walks in that exhibition game notwithstanding), better K’s and his innings total indicates he can clearly go much deeper into games. And I’m guessing he is not as familiar with the Mecheian Big-Inning.
If the M’s go after him aggressively they could wind up with a bargain.
Igawa looks like a better pitcher than Adam Eaton or Vicente Padilla and he should make less than those two. Plus he’s a lefty and that helps in Safeco.
Ishii’s biggest problem (stateside, anyway) seemed to be his walk rate, but Igawa seems to have a much better walk rate. Converting kg’s season totals to rate stats, we get:
8.7 K/9, 2.5 BB/9, 1.07 HR/9 — Igawa, ’04-’06
10.0 K/9, 4.1 BB/9, 0.90 HR/9 — Ishii, ’99-’01
If those were two lines from AAA prospects, I’d probably prefer Igawa’s, perhaps just because I’m a sucker for low walk rates. It seems like guys with low walk rates translate their success better as they move up to tougher competition and have to face hitters who don’t get themselves out as often by swinging outside of the strike zone.
Oops. Sorry, in my e-mail I wrote that his name is “Keisuke,” but it’s actually just “Kei.” Not sure how I got that into my head.
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Nintendo should bit for Igawa.
One of Igawa’s famous word: “I practice hard, to make the Igawa in the TV game better and better every year.”
The issue a lot of Hanshin fans seemed to have with Igawa this year was how inconsistent he was early on, and they thought he might be dogging it so the team would get rid of him, since he’d stated many times how much he wanted to play in the Majors. He’s a gamer, though. When he’s on, he’s just plain brilliant. When he’s not, it makes you want to cry. Here’s a game log of his this year, from his site:
http://www.k-igawa.com/result/
May 5th, for example, was a game where the Tigers were up 11-1 in the top of the 4th and then Igawa went and gave up 5 runs in the next two innings, ultimately being responsible for runs in 5 innings on 116 pitches. Against the bottom-feeding Yokohama Bay Stars, no less! And that was in the midst of three outings in a row of him giving up 6 earned runs per. Even funnier was his two starts against PL bottom-feeder Rakuten – at home, he pitched a complete game win and struck out 12, and then on the road, he started off brilliant and then suddenly out of nowhere couldn’t control the ball at all, giving up 5 runs in 6 innings. It was almost like his brain had suddenly remembered it didn’t make the trip to Sendai after all.
Then, of course, he settled down in the second half of the year and was amazing, having something like a 2.16 ERA in Sept/Oct, only giving up 2 earned runs total in his last four starts… and the CL pennant race ended up so close this year that there was a whole bunch of “if Igawa hadn’t screwed up early on, we’d have won it,” feeling, it seemed. It was like, “Hey, would the Tigers fans be happy to see their ace go to the majors so they don’t have to put up with him anymore?”
Personally, the only real opinion on Igawa I feel like expressing is that he really could use a better haircut. I guess we shall see what happens when the dust settles.
Igawa has better control than Ishii,but he is more homer prone.
He played in large Koshien,Ishii played in small Jingu.
DMZ — I really hope the posting fee stays between 5-10 million. Although I can’t help but feel it is going to go between 15 and 20 million.
Any thoughts on Kip Wells? At this point he seems unlikely to be getting any sort of major-league contract. He’s 29, only a few years from back to back productive seasons, and has always had the “good stuff, but” label. Obviously he’s an injury risk, but at league minimum, he seems like a high-upside guy to add to the rotation mix.
He’s a gamer, though. When he’s on, he’s just plain brilliant. When he’s not, it makes you want to cry.
Sounds like Daniel Cabrera. In fact, his stats look like what you’d expect of Cabrera in a couple of years (assuming he moderates his insane levels of flakiness). Igawa looks interesting, but #4 starter interesting.
If it were $5-7M for the posting, I might think about sending in a bid. $15M? Hell no. I’d sooner trade Sexson and cash to the O’s for Cabrera.
If it were $5-7M for the posting, I might think about sending in a bid. $15M? Hell no. I’d sooner trade Sexson and cash to the O’s for Cabrera.
I’m pretty sure you’d have to send a lot more than that to get Cabrera. Even if Cabrera doesn’t fix his walk problem a whole lot, you’re looking at a pitcher with a roughly similar profile to Nolan Ryan–a pretty good, if overrated, pitcher in his own right.
Cabrera’s already striking out hitters at a rate of 9.1 K/G, whereas you’re looking at maybe 7 K/G for Igawa, which is a pretty big difference.
with a roughly similar profile to Nolan Ryan–a pretty good, if overrated, pitcher in his own right.
You realize I had to read that three times before I realized that it wasn’t just my “being on vacation” eyes playing tricks on me.
From what I’ve read of his scouting report, he sounds like something across between Barry Zito and Jarrod Washburn.
Age 24 and 25 seasons:
9.1 K/9, 5.6 BB/9, 0.73 HR/9 — Cabrera
9.6 K/9, 5.6 BB/9, 0.45 HR/9 — Ryan
That’s mainly what I mean by “roughly similar.”
From what I remember when I saw Cabrera pitching, he’s a hard-thrower. I don’t know why he’d be compared to Zito or Washburn.
Igawa is about as comparable, as a pitcher, to Daniel Cabrera as George Sherrill is.