Mets Begin Pursuit of Daisuke Matsuzaka

[Guest Rotblatt]

From this article from Newsday, it looks like we're serious about trying to sign Daisuke Matsuzaka, the premeire pitcher in the Japan League. Some of you may remember him from the World Baseball Classic, where he helped lead his team to the championship.

I'm guessing the Yankees are the favorites to land him--it's all going to come down to money.

For me, we should be very, very agressive. The dude's got nasty stuff (even if the gyroball thing is a myth), great control, he turns just 26 today, and he's been a workhorse in Japan. I would absolutely love to see him on the Mets next year.

[seawolf17]

Sign him! I want to see the shooto! (Isn't that the other name for the gyroball?)

[Guest Edgy DC]

I'm just really happy that the Mets continue to go aggressively after Japanese players even though they haven't really had a match yet in seven* or so tries. A loserer team would've thrown their hands up by now. Not my Mets, bless them.

*Takashi Kashiwada, Satoru Komiyama, Kazuo Matsui, Hideo Nomo, Tsuyoshi Shinjo, Shingo Takatsu, Masato Yoshii

[soupcan]

Edgy DC wrote: I'm just really happy that the Mets continue to go aggressively after Japanese players even though they haven't really had a match yet in seven* or so tries. A loserer team would've thrown their hands up by now. Not my Mets, bless them.

That's an excellent point.

[metsmarathon]

nomo and yoshii weren't too bad for us...

edit: 4 and 5 with a 4.82 era. scratch nomo.

yoshii wasn't too bad for us.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

Yoshii was a postseason starting pitcher. That's a pretty special thing to be.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I'm not knocking any of them. It's just nobody grew beyond a relatively small role and a relatively ephemeral place in Met History.

[Frayed Knot]

Assuming that they wind up pursuing this guy, the Met "record" with players from the far east is destined to become a huge topic of conversation IMO; as if the performance of the ones who came before has some sort of direct bearing on the odds of a new one succeeding.
Add that to the (false) perception that the line of Asian Mets has been nothing short of a colossal failure and it could get real ugly. In fact, only KazMat was ever paid and presented as "star" material, and only JW Seo as a prospect. The remainder were never paid or slotted as anything other than role players and possible fill-ins, but somehow that little nugget has been more or less ... wait for it ... Lost in Translation

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

And if Daisuke fails to win a Cy Young, some message board retard can call him Die, Sucky! It's perfect!

[seawolf17]

="Edgy DC"]I'm not knocking any of them. It's just nobody grew beyond a relatively small role and a relatively ephemeral place in Met History.

We'll always have this:

[Methead]

I forgot all about Komiyama.

Takashi Kashiwada remains one of my wife's favorite Mets.

[Centerfield]

I remember reading an article where Matzusaka denies throwing a gyroball.

[MFS62]

Yosaku Iriki was 4-8, 4.80 for Norfolk this year.

Later

[Gwreck]

="seawolf17"] We'll always have this:

He's Korean, not Japanese.

[seawolf17]

Oh, dear God. I'm horribly embarassed. I'm an ass.

[Centerfield]

FK is, as Thirteen used to be, absolutely right.

By my count, there have been 9 Asian Mets (Takashi Kashiwada, Satoru Komiyama, Kazuo Matsui, Hideo Nomo, Tsuyoshi Shinjo, Shingo Takatsu, Masato Yoshii, Jae Seo, Dae Sung Koo), one Asian American Met (Benny Agbayani, of Filipino heritage, born in Hawaii) and one Latino Met of Asian descent (Bruce Chen, of Chinese heritage, born in Panama).

Of these 11 players, I would say two were disappointments. Kaz Matsui, of course, and Satoru Komiyama, who was signed for little money, but the expectation was that he could be an effective 5th starter.

I would say five of these players, ended up being about what we expected. Takashi Kashiwada, Hideo Nomo, Shingo Takatsu, Dae Sung Koo, and Bruce Chen neither exceeded nor failed to live up to expectations.

Three of these players, I would go as far as to say were pleasant surprises. Yoshii was much better than we ever expected him to be. Agbayani was a non-prospect who turned in a few good years, and Tsuyoshi Shinjo, signed to be a 4th outfielder, ended up batting third a couple of times during his Met career (perhaps more of a commentary about the lineup than Shinjo, but you get the idea).

The one guy that's tough to pigeon-hole is Jae Seo. Seo was certainly a disappointment when you consider what we were hoping he'd be as a prospect. But after his surgery, he resuscitated his career after being a forgotten man. He turn in a few good years, and then had the courtesy to wait until after he was traded for Duaner to start blowing ass.

[Guest ScarletKnight41]

Mr. Koo also very happy that seawolf enjoyed Memoirs of a Geisha.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I wasn't trying to suggest otherwise.

And Seo as a prospect was a maybe anyhow, as the Mets eventually diagnosed a partial injury in his arm and downgraded his considerable cash signing bonus to an old Bobby Bonilla jockstrap.

My point is in discussing the market of Japanese veterans, the Mets have taken their share of shots. The fact is that they've generally found useful players, although not so useful that their like couldn't be found elsewhere.

I congratualate them for continuing to seek guys who can help them, and develop the approach to the market that suits them.

It's worth pointing out that they've never won the bidding on a player whose rights have posted, a tremendously risky dealio because you have to pay tthe posting team a hefty compensaiton before even negotiating with the player. Being outbid cost them Ichiro, but protected them from being tied up long-term on Ishii. It's a tough marketplace that's still evolving. The Mets, as they try to figure it out, have more resources than most teams to do so.

By the way, if we're looking at players of Asian hertiage, Ron Darling was half Irish-American, a quarter Hawaiaan-American, and a quarter Chinese-American.

I'm going to start a webapage devoted to quadroon Mets. Do you think I'd get any hiits?

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

Ron Darling on SNY recently: "My mother is Hawaiian Chinese, and my father is the whitest guy in North America."

[MFS62]

And Ron Swoboda had a Chinese grandfather.
His widowed grandmother got a job in a Chinese restaurant and eventually married the owner.

Later

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

Yancy Street Gang wrote: Ron Darling on SNY recently: "My mother is Hawaiian Chinese, and my father is the whitest guy in North America."

I thought I was the whitest guy in North America. Gosh.

[Guest old original jb]

="Frayed Knot"]Assuming that they wind up pursuing this guy, the Met "record" with players from the far east is destined to become a huge topic of conversation IMO; as if the performance of the ones who came before has some sort of direct bearing on the odds of a new one succeeding.Add that to the (false) perception that the line of Asian Mets has been nothing short of a colossal failure and it could get real ugly. In fact, only KazMat was ever paid and presented as "star" material, and only JW Seo as a prospect. The remainder were never paid or slotted as anything other than role players and possible fill-ins, but somehow that little nugget has been more or less ... wait for it ... Lost in Translation

It might, not because they are all from East Asia, but because it may be an indication of organizational weakness in scouting in that region, and a lack of familiarity with whatever one has to know in order to figure out whose talents will translate well to MLB. I recall that Bobby V., having managed there, was a big source of input on Japanese players, but it didn't really produce much in the way of results--the best Japanese players have been more vigorously and successfully pursued by other teams while the Mets got players who more or less didn't pan out beyond adequacy.

Scouting is not the same as managing, and scouting a foreign league may be a skill unto itself.

So maybe it really is a coherent track record and unless improvements in scouting have been made, maybe prior failures do predict future failures.

In any case, I hope not, and I hope that Mr. Gyroball has some eccentric and compelling reason why he would never play for the Yankees, but only for the Mets. (I can engage in wishful thinking, can't I?)

[Guest Edgy DC]

I'd say 90% of the North American males born since 1959 to white fathers think their Dad is the wihtest guy in North America.

[Frayed Knot]

]not because they are all from East Asia, but because it may be an indication of organizational weakness in scouting in that region, and a lack of familiarity with whatever one has to know in order to figure out whose talents will translate well to MLB

Except that (with the exception of Matsui) it's not like the Mets scouted these guys and pegged them as super-duper stars only to see them all fail to meet expectations. Yet there seems to be a general feeling around Met-dom that somehow the "exoctic-ness" of Asian imports meant that they were ALL supposed to become major players, leading fans to act as if they were duped and mgm't so incompetant when it didn't turn out that way that we best not venture there ever again.

As mentioned, Matsui's the one case where they should examine what went wrong - although I've yet to hear anyone (including Bobby V) who didn't love the guy - but it hardly signals that there's a lengthy bad track record involving everything east Asian.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Why limited to East Asia? It's not like they've signed any Indians or Mongols or Sherpas worth a dam recently.