Thoughts on Iwakuma
In what is shaping up to be a busy offseason, with rumors swirling about Hiroyuki Nakajima and Yu Darvish, the one confirmed posting we have is for Rakuten ace Hisashi Iwakuma. RJ Anderson called Iwakuma “Andre 3000″ during the 2009 WBC, and I said he was Japan’s second best pitching prospect in August. Now that we know he’s coming over, I’ll take a little bit of a deeper dive into what he brings to the table.
Iwakuma’s best skill has been controlling the home run ball. His best performance came in his Sawamura Award season of 2008, when he allowed a mere three homers in 201.2 innings for a 0.13 HR/9IP rate. After a more pedestrian 15 bombs in 169 innings last year, he bounced back in 2010, keeping the ball in the yard all but 11 times in 201 innings pitching, good for a 0.40 HR/9IP figure. It caught my eye that nine of his 11 homers allowed in 2010 came in his home stadium, Kleenex Stadium Miyagi, where he threw 118.2 innings. But that looks like an aberration, as I couldn’t find any real evidence of that kind of a home/road split among his teammates. Still, if Iwakuma winds up in a pitcher-friendly home stadium, that could offset the reality that he will face many more players capable of hitting home runs in MLB.
Iwakuma’s out pitch is his forkball, and his MLB success will be predicated on how well it survives the trip across the Pacific. Here’s some basic data on what he threw in 2010:
Notes about this data: groundball and flyball data includes hits, shuuto is a cousin of the two-seam fastball, we usually call “forkballs” “split-finger fastballs” in the US.
Before pulling this data, I knew Iwakuma’s forkball was good, but I didn’t realize it was that good. 37.2% of the times he threw it, he got either a swinging strike or a groundball. The groudball figure includes 28 hits, but that’s still pretty impressive.
Here’s a look at his called strikes:
Some of those fastballs and sliders that handcuffed NPB hitters are going to get hit in MLB, and some of those forkballs in the dirt aren’t going to get chased. But the data shows that Iwakuma can get all five of his pitches over the plate, including his seldom-used cutter.
Now the risk: it’s reasonable to expect a drop in effectiveness and/or command from some or all of Iwakuma’s pitches. I don’t think there is any good way to predict which of of Iwakuma’s pitches could suffer, but Hiroki Kuroda and Daisuke Matsuzaka have notably struggled with their forkballs in MLB. Iwakuma will need to buck that trend to approach the level of effectiveness he experienced in Japan.
The other, more generic question mark also applies: can he withstand the more demanding MLB schedule? He’s thrown 200 innings in two of the last three years, but he’ll have to adjust to starting every fifth day instead of once a week, pitching to better competition and a more demanding travel schedule. In 2010, Iwakuma averaged 107.61 pitches per game, so his workload on a per-game basis was not out of line with MLB norms. I think that will work in his favor.
I’ve been asked a couple times already how much I think his posting fee will be, and how much it will take to sign him. Iwakuma carries some risk, but overall I would put his upside in the mid-rotation starter range. I think there is a lot of variability in how MLB teams will evaluate him, so I’ll put the over/under for his posting fee at $10m, and his contract at four years, $20m.
Yes, there are “many more players capable of hitting home runs in MLB,” but that’s only part of the problem, isn’t it? It’s my impression that for hitters, HR/SLG doesn’t project well at all from Japan to the US. If that’s also true for pitchers, then a guy whose “best skill has been controlling the home run ball” becomes very hard to judge.
On that basis Iwakuma might appeal to a particular type of team – one with a lower-mid to mid-range budget that needs pitching, and will take a limited risk for it.
Hmmm…. I believe you just described, Arizona. Or Chicago.
This is purely an observation, and I don’t mean any disrespect.
If I had to guess at the number of people that care about this stuff when the MLB playoffs are in full swing or have heard of anyone in this article, I’d say it’s approximately 0.1% of the readership here.
Always knew I was unique, but I didn’t think I was a one in one thousand on a baseball site!
You willingly clicked on the link to this post (obviously NOT written about MLB postseason baseball), then thought it was smart to type this reply? It’s interesting stuff no matter the time of year, and it takes 5 minutes to read at most. How much postseason writing must you digest in one day such that you don’t have 5 minutes to spare for this?
And yet you cared enough to read it and waste your time offering up this response. If you’re not interested in something, don’t read it.
I thought it was a really interesting article.
Meh, kind of agree, but still douchey.
Thanks for the interesting article! I must be part of the 0.1% of the readership . . .
I’m glad to read about something other than the playoffs. Also can’t knock any article that includes a reference to Kleenex Stadium, where crying about baseball is encouraged.
I thought it was interesting and useful, so count me as part of the 0.1%. Not sure what the first poster has stuck in his craw.
Dont they use a slightly smaller ball in Japan. That would probably explain the difficulty with the forkball when moving to MLB play as the forkball grip is pretty dependent on hand size.
This was Daisuke’s problem exactly. Size of hands? Hard to talk about without making jokes but very real scouting issue. Still, legit #3 starters are hard to come by. I’m very interested to see who gets the bid. Does anyone know if there is a minimum on these posting fees?
Yep, I think you’re right on. Matsuzaka hasn’t kept his forkball, but Nomo did. The fork is such a key pitch for Iwakuma that he’ll have to keep it or reinvent himself.
What were Kuroda and Daisuke’s gb rates like in Japan?
What is a shuuto?
A slightly different version of a 2 seam fastball.
Slower too. Greg Maddux likely threw one most of his career, especially later on. Its half-change, half-fastball.
I would see Iwakuma as another version of Kuroda. Not a fireball necessarily, but having good control. While you put it as his upside, I figure he’ll be entrenched as a middle-of-the-rotation starter with limited upside/downside.
With only one good test case in Kuroda of an extreme GB pitcher going to MLB, it’ll be hard to say though.
Happy to proclaim myself another of the 0.1% (wow there is certainly a lot of us!). As somebody who follows and watches Japanese baseball I do see a lot to like in Iwakuma but I’m not sure he projects as the second best prospect for MLB. His teamate Tanaka and Softbank’s Wada and Sogiuchi would project higher to me.
Man….. I wish I could see the kanji for his name on this site.
On what site? FanGraphs? FanGraphs would actually be written in Katakana rather than Kanji, and it would be ???????.
Yikes, misread your comment. You can see Iwakuma’s name in Kanji on this page: http://npbtracker.com/data/jp/player.php?p_id=157
It seems that non-English characters don’t show up correctly here, but “Iwakuma Hisashi” is the four large characters directly beneath “NPB Tracker Data”.
????
Thanks for this AWESOME tidbit! I will definitely have to implement this in my blog!
Farewell!
Kuroda has struggled with his Forkball? Really? Then why was it worth 5 runs this year? 2.8 last year? It is a huge part of his 51% GB rate.
Not sure if they use smaller balls in Japan, but each team does use a different ball (e.g., some with more raised stitching, different texture, etc.). Would be interesting to see–but likely very difficult to substantiate– if Japanese pitchers accustomed to a certain ball in the NPB were more/less successful after moving to MLB. BTW, next season NPB is going to standardize its baseballs. http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201009160467.html
What an excellent description! No idea how you managed to write this post..it’d take me days. Well worth it though, I’d suspect. Have you considered selling banners on your blog?
I think this is fascinating. Do you have any link/reference concerning how much variability in baseball characteristics were/are allowed in NPB? I realize this article is now over a year old and the link you posted has expired, but as a fan of the Mariners (and physics), I’d love to hear more about this.
Patrick, do you have a link to a piece on NPB Tracker or FG that addresses these (potentially consequential) differences in rules, cultures, and attitudes between MLB and NPB? Thanks!