A Japanese import better than Ichiro and Yu Darvish…
I know my audience is usually limited to prospect nerds, like myself, but this article is for every sports fan: prospect nerds, baseball nuts who don’t care one bit about prospects, and even NFL or NBA only guys. Babe Ruth may still be alive. He has been rumored to have been seen near a volcano in Hokkaido. Apparently, he has taken the form of a scrawny 6’3″Japanese 21-year-old. Shohei Otani doesn’t show up on any prospect lists (except my Worldwide Top 400), but he is without question the top MLB prospect. He may be posted this off-season, or it may be many seasons from now, we can’t really be sure. There is one thing we can be sure of, however; when Otani is posted, there will be a media frenzy and a potential 400 million dollar contract.
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Over the past six seasons, only two Japanese Pacific League hitters have posted an OPS over 1.000. One of them was the best player in Cuba, who hit more homers than both Yoenis Cespedes and Jose Abreu. Then there is Shohei Otani. The 21-year-old lefty hitter is batting an absurd .365/.444/.765 with a 1.209 OPS! To put that in perspective, Ichiro had a .999 OPS as a 26-year-old the year before signing with the Mariners, winning rookie of the year, MVP and leading them to a major league record 116 wins. But that’s not all….
Otani only recently started hitting on a regular basis and the reason is that he was too busy striking out 11 batters per nine innings with his 102 MPH fastball. Yu Darvish, you know, the guy who led the American League with 6.2 H/9 and 11.9 K/9 in his second MLB season, only struck out 9.1 as a 20-year-old. So, Otani struck out batters at a rate 21% higher than Yu Darvish at the same age–and when Darvish did it, he led all of Japan! 21% is the same difference between Felix Hernandez and Chris Heston last season. If you add 21% to Darvish’s 277 MLB Ks in 2013, you get 335 Ks. The only modern era pitchers that have even struck out that many in a season are Nolan Ryan, Randy Johnson, Sandy Koufax and Bob Feller. Roger Clemens isn’t on that list, neither is Pedro Martinez, Bob Gibson or Clayton Kershaw.
At 21 years old, Greg Maddux was wrapping up a season where he went 6 and 14 with a 5.61 ERA, Randy Johnson was still four years removed from completing his rookie season, Max Scherzer was getting ready to be drafted in the middle of the first round and Hideki Matsui was a slightly above average Japanese League hitter. Needless to say, Otani’s potential could still far surpass the absurd numbers he is already putting up.
Is Otani going to compete for MLB batting crowns while hitting 30 homers and striking out 300 hitters on his way to yet another Cy Young? I can’t definitively say no, and shouldn’t that be enough to make you dream like a kid again?
