Jackson and I have been doing some evaluations of NPB pitchers that will or will not be headed to MLB next year for a Yahoo! piece. One of the things I’ve come across and found interesting are the similarities in Japanese league sample sizes of Kenshin Kawakami (likely have 1550 innings after 2008), who will be looking to sign this winter, and Hiroki Kuroda (1510.1 innings), who signed for $35.3 million over three years last offseason.
Dave Cameron of Fangraphs has a post about Kuroda up today illustrating how up and down he’s been this season. Overall, he’s been solid…seven wins against 10 losses, but with an ERA of 3.87 and an FIP of 3.65. He’s definately done his duty to keep the Dodgers in ballgames.
Assuming he stays healthy and progresses after a full year in the states, he’ll be a very valuable pitcher. Here’s a recent article from the LA Times talking about some of the emotional ups and downs Kuroda has had this season, his first since the death of his father last year of lung cancer.
But the odd thing about Kuroda is the wild variations in the quality of his starts, which Cameron measures with Game Scores. Kuroda has had two scores of 90 or above, and three starts below 20. Not an easy feat.
As someone who drafted Kuroda in a fantasy league and held onto him all season my heart can attest to this.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Patrick // Sep 3, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Kuroda and Kawakami also have similar peripheral stats over the course of their careers.
2 Shinsano // Sep 3, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Yeah, I kind of stopped myself from going into that since the post is about Kuroda, but really similar — you could even adjust them for the fact that Kuroda played in a smaller ballpark and probably get really similar numbers.
The big difference being K/BB, which would put Kawakami in the Top 5 of MLB if he can somehow carry it over.
It’s going to be very very interesting to see what he ends up with amidst the best free agency class of MLB pitchers I can remember…Sabathia, Sheets, Lowe, Dempster, Burnett…where does Kawakami fit in? I don’t know if it’ll help or hurt him, but I’d guess teams should start out with Kuroda’s contract and go up from there, no?
3 Patrick // Sep 4, 2008 at 1:10 am
Yeah, I’d look at Kuroda’s contract as a benchmark for Kawakami. Kawakami will be a year older than Kuroda was at the time of signing, and Kuroda throws a bit harder, so I don’t know if Kawakami will get a bigger contract. I think it’ll be about the same.
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