Previewing Tazawa’s First Start
Tonight, Junichi Tazawa is slated to make his first major league start against the Detroit Tigers. Tazawa made his debut last week against the Yankees, facing nine batters allowing a home run, walking nobody, and striking a pair out. He tossed 35 pitches, 24 for strikes, with most of them being fastballs although he also threw an assortment of breaking pitches and even a pair of off-speed pitches.
The Tigers lineup figures to look something like this:
Granderson CF
Polanco 2B
Thomas LF
Cabrera 1B
Guillen DH
Ordonez RF
Inge 3B
Laird C
Everett SS
Only three lefties (Guillen is a switch hitter) but it probably won’t matter too much. According to MinorLeagueSplits, Tazawa struck out a quarter of the left-handed batters he faced in the minors while walking eight percent. Against righties his strikeout total was down to 18%, but his walk rate halved.
The scouting report on Tazawa includes a fastball in the low-90s that cuts into righties; a 81-83 MPH slider that serves as Tazawa’s out-pitch; a curve that sits around 76-78 and has two-plane movement; and a change-up that also sits 81-83. That repertoire seems to agree with the numbers in saying he can be effective against any batter, including the abnormal species known as left-handers. One thing to watch is Tazawa’s release points, check the separation from his reliever outing on his breaking stuff and fastballs, they seem to be slightly higher:
Detroit is a middle of the pack offensive team, but Fenway favors hitters and is practically a doubles haven, so there’s a decent chance Tazawa gets touched up a bit. If he doesn’t, I’m sure we’ll hear about him non-stop from ESPN for the next two years.
29
Not sure if this was a complete anomaly, but he threw a big looping curve ball in the first the checked in at 69. I think he was channeling his inner Wakefield.
He was good for his first start. He had a nightmare first inning, an E6 (what a shocker) that should’ve been a double play. I’m hoping he is closer to Dice-K than Kei Igawa.
Tazawa might be better than both, and cheaper too.
Remember that Tazawa is just 22 and not even a year removed from the Japanese equivalent of college baseball and already has 4 plus pitches. The Sox didn’t pay a posting fee and his contract is dirt cheap, relatively.
Even if he ends up a number 3-4 starter, he is well worth it.
I think you’re overstating his stuff a bit. The fastball is average and the curve is fringe average. The slider and the split/change both look solidly above-average or plus pitches.
You know, an MLE would probably be a lot more informative than this release poitn stuff.
So who is going to lose their spot in the Boston rotation when Tim Wakefield returns to action?
That’s an easy question: Tazawa
There’s no way Tazawa stays in the rotation if the sox have a healthy alternative. He’s only 22 and has something like 18 professional innings above AA. They won’t push their luck with him. I’ll be surprised if he pitches 50+ innings this season. Nonetheless, this was still a fairly impressive start. He didn’t have to face cabrera a second time, so he was facing a fairly weak lineup, but he still looked pretty good and he should have been out of the first inning without giving up anything.
Wow, i don’t know if Tawzawa pitches well wouldn’t Buchholz have to go?
http://www.sabertoothedtiger.blogspot.com
You were wrong.
I was really impressed with how he knuckled down after the triple to Ordonez. Two huge K’s there
Maybe Dice-K can take a lesson from Tazawa in “not walking the bases loaded 101″
That would be nice, wouldn’t it? But I don’t think Dice-K is taking lessons from anyone, which is really part of the problem.
Apparently we’re supposed to cater to him or something as Sox fans?
Mind me if I’m skeptical about how Dice-K’s old throwing regiment would transfer over to MLB given that this guy (http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/rhodeka01.shtml) is tied for the single season record in HR in Japan. Maybe he should try, I don’t know, not throwing 120 pitches to get through 5 innings.
I don’t know if it is illusion or what, but isn’t Tazawa looking better than Buchholz?
His secondary pitches are very good. Besides that looping curve that can only fool college hitters, his other breaking pitches are solid plus. Couple with an above average 92 mph fastball, he is your 2/3 starter you wanted for Christmas!
It seems to me that the red sox would much prefer buchholz to tazawa if they had to pick 1 player to establish himself in the majors this year. Buchholz is out of options after this season, no (he was up and down in 2007, 2008 and again this season, so that’s all three years of options isn’t it)?
In any event, the point is that all things being equal, they want buchholz up and will only keep tazawa in the rotation if he excels AND they continue to have a need for him (though i think he can stick in the bullpen if he pitches well). buchholz would have to be much much worse than tazawa to lose his spot to tazawa after wakefield gets back. And even though buchholz allowed too many men on base in NY, he definietly bought himself some time with 6 innings of 2-run ball in yankee stadium.
Buchholz won’t hit his arb years until after 2010.
Joe R.
I wasn’t talk about arbitration, I was talking about options.
I admit that am not 100% sure how the options system in baseball works, but my impression that a player had 3 options (with some arcane path for certain players to get a 4th option), each of which could be used to transfer him to and from a minor league affiliate for a full major league season. This would be the 3rd season in which Buchholz has been juggled between Boston and Pawtucket, which led me to assume that this was the last season that would be possible.
Is there also a service time component? I didn’t think options had anything to do arbitration eligibility. I know that big time stars like Manny Ramirez often retain their options long after they become free agents because they succeeded immediately upon being promoted and never got sent back down to AAA.
The point I was trying to make is that if Buchholz can’t establish himself in the major leagues soon then he will lose a lot of value to the red sox because he would have to clear waivers to be sent back to AAA, and it’s unlikely that nobody else would want him.