By Robert Whiting (2009)
It used to be, many, many years ago, that aging MLB stars would come to Japan for one last big, fat paycheck. Those of you older readers might recall the days of Gary Thomasson, the multi-million dollar “Giants Human Fan,” who signed a big money deal for Kyojin and delivered mediocre statistics for 3 years. Or troublemaker Joe Pepitone, another player who signed a big money contract for Yakult, only to show up one day at the stadium without his shoes, and later depart the team in mid-season, uncomfortable with life in Japan. Rob Deer, another big slugger acquired by Hanshin, barely hit .200. The list goes on and on.
In fact, there was a time in 1987 when one commissioner said, “If Japanese baseball keeps trying to acquire high-priced free agents from the US, we will be thrown into chaos. There isn’t much we can learn from foreigners anymore and it is time we stopped trying. Is there any foreign player who has ever taught the Japanese anything of value?… Besides, there are too many troublemakers among foreigners. In the future, pure-blooded baseball is ideal. We have to have a real World Series in the future between the U.S. and Japan. We can’t do that with foreign players here.”
Another commissioner, Takezo Shimoda, called gaijin players “overpaid, underproductive and generally annoying. Pure-blooded baseball is better.”
Now, the tables have been turned. 2009 will go down in history as the year that the limitations of Japanese baseball were discovered by MLB. The success of Nomo, Ichiro, and to a lesser extent Hideki Matsui, had convinced many that the top stars of the NPB would be top stars in the MLB, and they set about acquiring as many as they possibly could.
But now, after 15 years of signing Japanese ballplayers to big money contracts, the end may be near. There is a long, long list of batters, signed to multi-million dollar contracts in the MLB, who did not nearly approach their statistics in Japan, when they were consistently among the league leaders in batting average, RBIs and home runs. They include Tadahito Iguchi, Kazuo Matsui, Kenji Johjima, among others.
This year, the Chicago Cubs have grown disgusted with the mediocre statistics put up by Kosuke Fukudome, a man they paid nearly $40 million for. Said one Cubs scout, the guy is just incapable of hitting the outside pitch. Maybe he can survive in Japan, but he really doesn’t belong in the major leagues at the kind of salary he is being paid and the kind of batting he has shown (.259 with only 21 homers in two years). The Baltimore Orioles have expressed similar disgust with Koji Uehara, 2-4 with a 4.06 ERA, and the Atlanta Braves have shuffled highly paid import Kenshin Kawakami, 7-12 with a 3.86 ERA, to the bullpen. And do we need to mention Masa Kobayashi—released by Cleveland, who had made a big initial investment in him? Or Tazawa, who seems incapable of throwing a major league fastball? Or Dice-K Matsuzaka, the man with the 5.76 ERA who spent most of this year in the minor leagues and is slated to spend the opening playoffs in the bullpen? Hiroki Kuroda has pitched some good games, but he spends too much time on the DL for someone with his kind of salary.
A major league official told me the other day that the days of big money contracts to Japanese players are coming to an end. He predicted that the highest contract a Japanese player might get in MLB this off-season would be around $1 million a season.
The simple truth of the matter is that MLB teams, fans and writers are just not that interested in Japanese players anymore—with the exception of Ichiro and Hideki Matsui (who had a great season, but may be too risky an investment for the Yankees next year given his bad knees and high price tag.)
The sports press in the US covers the exploits of Japanese players in the MLB much less than Japanese living in Japan might imagine. Sports pages normally devote about 1% of their space to the exploits of Japanese players.
Next year, it may be a lot lower than that.
Tokyo Junkie 