Kei Igawa was a colossal misread of a Japanese pitcher.
Igawa’s major league signing occurred before the 2007 season, when the Yankees gave the left-hander a five-year contract worth $20 million and paid a $26 million posting fee to the Hanshin Tigers of Nippon Professional Baseball.
For that money, the Yankees received 16 appearances over parts of two seasons from Igawa, who pitched to a cumulative 6.66 ERA.
There is always some level of trepidation about how a Japanese pitcher’s success in his homeland will translate to the MLB stage, but much of the guesswork in recent years has been mitigated by technology.
It’s a subject worth mentioning following the Mets’ pursuit of star right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who reached agreement with the Dodgers late Thursday on a 12-year contract worth $325 million.
The Dodgers also will pay a posting fee of roughly $50 million to Yamamoto’s former team, the Orix Buffaloes of Japan’s Pacific League.
The Mets, according to an industry source, never received an opportunity to increase their bid on Yamamoto after offering a contract of the same length and value as the Dodgers.
It’s an indication that Los Angeles was Yamamoto’s intended destination, but offers from teams such as the Mets and Yankees (who reportedly bid $300 million) were used for leverage in negotiations.
Teams scouted Yamamoto in person, but now — unlike in the era in which Igawa pitched — they had extensive hard data to support or question their observations.
Such is the benefit of technology such as TrackMan, which is available in most, if not all, Japanese ballparks. The system can measure velocity, spin rate and trajectory of pitches, painting a fuller picture.
“When teams see spin rate and vertical drop, then it’s not, ‘Oh, sure, he struck that guy out because it was a Japanese hitter,’ ” said former Mets manager Bobby Valentine, who had two stints managing in Japan and still visits the country regularly to scout players. “It’s more like, ‘He struck him out because it was a quality pitch on the computer,’ and that’s how things are viewed these days.”
Technology, of course, doesn’t account for the adjustments a Japanese pitcher faces coming to the U.S., from the different feel of the baseball to pitching in a five-man rotation for the first time. In Japan, a six-man rotation is standard.
There is also the matter of the mound’s constitution: the dirt used is generally firmer in the U.S., and pitchers arriving from Japan can have difficulty with their landing spot.
“When your spikes hit here, they stick,” Valentine said. “In Japan, they absorb the softness of the landing, it absorbs your body and I think that has had a lot to do with [Japanese pitchers] not getting arm injuries. A pitcher’s spikes stick here and it’s a real quick stop with your body going forward and that propels the arm. They have to get used to that.”
Kodai Senga, who arrived to the Mets last offseason on a five-year contract worth $75 million, was a quick study. Last season, he was selected to the All-Star Game and finished second in the National League Rookie of the Year voting.
Now Yamamoto will head to the Dodgers, who can feel even more comfortable about signing a Japanese pitcher than in previous decades (Hideo Nomo, Hiroki Kuroda and Kenta Maeda, to name a few) based on the empirical data available.
“Three hundred million dollars is a lot of money, and there are going to be those kind of big offers because [teams] know what they’re buying,” Valentine said, referring to Yamamoto. “He has the best stuff.”
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How Gibbons got back to Queens
When John Gibbons heard last month that Carlos Mendoza had been hired by the Mets, he wondered to himself whether the rookie manager (whom he didn’t know personally) might seek an experienced bench coach.
But without any ties to the Mets’ new regime, Gibbons didn’t bother inquiring about the job.
Shortly thereafter, Gibbons — who twice managed the Blue Jays, but had been absent from an MLB dugout for five years — received an unexpected phone call from his former bench coach, DeMarlo Hale.
Hale wanted to know if it was OK to pass along Gibbons’ number to Mendoza, who had requested it. The Mets were interested in the 61-year-old Gibbons, who interviewed with Mendoza and Stearns, ultimately accepting the bench coach position.
“Sure enough, back to where it all started,” said Gibbons, a former catcher and first-round pick by the Mets in the 1980 draft whose major league career consisted of 18 games with the club. “If you can’t beat them, join them.”
Gibbons said he’s been speaking regularly with Mendoza over the past few weeks to get a feel for the new manager and what the interaction between the two might be like during games.
“I think it’ll be a good combo between us,” Gibbons said. “He’s the boss, and the bench coach’s job is really a sounding board. But I’ve got to figure out what he’s going to want from me once we get to know each other a little bit more.”
Gibbons served as Royals bench coach between his stints managing the Blue Jays. The two Royals managers he worked under, Trey Hillman and Ned Yost, had different ideas about utilizing the bench coach.
“Hillman was an old friend of mine and we would talk things out, but Ned didn’t really need a lot because he’d been managing for a while in Milwaukee,” Gibbons said. “It’s really all going to depend on what Carlos wants and needs because he’s calling the shots, and you get those jobs for a reason — you’ve got a pretty good idea what you are doing. They’re all different.”
Gibbons managed the Mets’ Triple-A team in Norfolk for three seasons beginning in 1999. He was asked to return for a fourth season, but frustrated in part that he hadn’t received a promotion to the major league coaching staff, decided to leave the organization.
That led him to the Blue Jays, where his former minor league roommate J.P. Ricciardi (who later worked in the Mets front office) had just been named the general manager. Gibbons worked as a bullpen catcher and got promoted to the coaching staff before becoming Blue Jays manager during the 2004 season.
He spent almost five seasons in the role before he was fired. He got the job again before the 2013 season. The Blue Jays twice reached the postseason during his second stint as manager.
“[Gibbons] is a guy that has an ability to connect with people and to relate,” Mendoza said at the winter meetings. “He connects with people from different backgrounds, not only players but coaches and front office people … we’re pretty excited to have him.”
Tapping the keg
It’s difficult not to like the first significant trade of Stearns’ tenure in Queens, the deal on Wednesday that brought Adrian Houser and Tyrone Taylor from the Brewers in exchange for minor league pitcher Coleman Crow.
The Brewers needed to dump salary on arbitration-eligible players and found a willing taker in Stearns, their former president of baseball operations.
In one swoop, the Mets landed a back-of-the-rotation starter and fourth outfielder, surrendering a pitcher rehabbing from Tommy John surgery who wasn’t regarded among the organization’s upper-tier prospects.
Taylor is a strong defensive player who will provide coverage at all three outfield positions. He profiles similar to Michael A. Taylor, a free agent in whom the Mets had been showing interest.
Houser, who pitched to a 4.12 ERA in 23 appearances last season for the Brewers, profiles as the fifth or sixth starter in the rotation (perhaps filling the swingman role at which Trevor Williams was so adept in 2022). The Mets’ infrastructure is improving.
