After the Oakland
A’s were the announced winner to the bidding rights for 29-year-old Japanese
pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma , Joe
Christensen reported that the Twins had actually submitted a bid for
the starter as well:
“The Twins made a bid to sign Japanese starting pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma, General Manager Bill Smith said today, but according to FoxSports.com, the winning bid went to Oakland.”
This is now
the Twins’ second attempt to extract a pitcher from the Japanese leagues. A year
ago, the
team tried unsuccessfully to sign Colby Lewis to a two-year deal after
Lewis tore through the Far East competition. Lewis ultimately decided to sign
with the team that drafted him, the Texas Rangers, and helped lead the team
into their first World Series appearance in franchise history.
Had Lewis opted
to sign with Minnesota over Texas, this signing would have proven to be quite
fruitful for the Twins. In spite of a 12-13 record, Lewis threw 201 innings
while posting a 196/65 K/BB ratio and a 3.93 xFIP. Furthermore, Lewis would
have been locked down through the 2011 season ($3 million) and a reasonable
option for a third year ($3.25 million in 2012), negating the need to haggle over
the status of Carl Pavano or pursuing other free agent options.
Iwakuma, like
Lewis, has a lot of traits that the Twins covet that plays to their current
strengths. For those that witnessed his performance in the World Baseball
Classic, viewers were subjected to a pitcher that threw a fastball/sinker just
32% of the time in his outings according to Josh
Kalk’s scouting report. Instead, he relied heavily on a splitter/slider
combination. This pace is questionable for a major league pitcher (the least
amount of fastballs thrown was by Toronto’s Shaun Marcum who threw it 45% of
the time), but this method incited tons of groundouts for Iwakuma. From the video here, you can
see that Iwakuma has excellent downward motion in his movement, living at the
bottom of the zone. With a potentially strong infield defense in 2011 (assuming
that J.J. Hardy is retained), a groundball-oriented pitcher would be preferable.
What is
interesting about this revelation is that the Twins may have had to bid upwards
of $10 million or more to the Rakuten Golden Eagles to simply obtain the rights
to negotiate with Iwakuma’s agent. It probably would have cost another $10
million in order to sign him to a contract. This means the organization figures
to have up to $15 million available for the 2011 season – an amount they would
have been willing to dedicate to one player.
As noted
above, Iwakuma possesses numerous qualities that the team values and like Lewis
last season, the Twins may have wound up with a great part for a reduced price
than if they were attempting to purchase it on the free agent market. Considering
that after Cliff Lee, the free market is a mish-mash of hodge-podge. Even Jorge
De La Rosa, by most accounts the second-best free agent starter, figures to
have some warts as he has yet to make an entire season’s worth of starts and is
expecting a four-year deal. As good as Carl Pavano’s been, he’s turning 35 in
January and may want to start discussing a multi-year deal. Clearly, the Twins
tried to solve the problem without having to break the bank or trade off prized
prospects.
