Posts tagged HirokiKuroda at FanHouse

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups

San Diego Padres (29-38) vs. Los Angeles Dodgers (31-34) - 3:35PM Est.

As much of a disappointment as the 2008 season has been for the San Diego Padres, looking at the big picture, things aren't nearly as bad as they seem. They've won five of their last six games, and even though they're still nine games under .500, they play in the NL West so they're still alive.

The Diamondbacks have plummeted back to earth after starting out so hot this season, and the Friars find themselves only 6.5 games out of first place. If San Diego's offense could ever manage to consistently score some runs, the Padres could find themselves right back in the thick of things.

Of course, it's entirely possible they could do it without their offense as they get their ace back on the mound this afternoon. Will Jake Peavy's return be the spark the Pads need?

You may remember --- raise your hand if you remember! -- last April when Kansas City Royals outfielder Joey Gathright showed off his jumping prowess by leaping over cars in a YouTube video.

Well, Gathright decided in a recent spring training game to ditch the cars and instead jump over Hiroki Kuroda of the Dodgers.

Next up for Gathright? Randy Johnson.

Via FanIQ.

Japanese pitcher Hiroki Kuroda has spent the last few weeks flirting with the Dodgers, Mariners, Diamondbacks and the Royals. Today Kuroda finally picked which guy is going to get to take him to the prom.

He's chosen the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Free-agent pitcher Hiroki Kuroda has reached an agreement in principle on a three-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, a baseball source told ESPN.com.

The Los Angeles Daily News reported the contract is worth $36 million-$40 million.

I'm a bit surprised by Kuroda's choice. I know his agent was pushing him more towards Los Angeles, but I figured that with Seattle's attempts to court him, including Bill Bavasi making a trip to Japan, and the fact the Mariners already have Ichiro Suzuki and Kenji Johjima would have made Seattle the more appealing option.

Kuroda though came to California this week, and apparently he liked what he saw while he was there and chose the Dodgers.

As for what this does to the free agent market for starting pitching, if your team is still looking for a starter I hope you're excited by names like Kyle Lohse and Carlos Silva.

The Seattle Mariners thought they had the best offer on the table for Hiroshima Carp star Hiroki Kuroda.

Kuroda's choice of team will reportedly have more to do with personal preference and less to do with the length of the deal.

Well, if it was personal preference, then the Mariners aren't going to like the latest reports, which have Kuroda preferring the Los Angeles Dodgers.

They had the most money on the table -- about $33 million over three years -- while the Dodgers were offering about $30 million for three years.

But reports out of Japan say he has picked the Dodgers after spending 11 years in Japan with the Hiroshima Carp. He was scheduled to make a recruiting trip to Los Angeles, Seattle and Arizona this week, but canceled over the weekend and narrowed down the finalists to the Dodgers and the Mariners.

So the dominoes start to fall ... very soon after Kosuke Fukudome signs, Kuroda seems close to putting his pen on the dotted line for the Dodgers. I can't help but think that the allure of playing for Joe Torre was enough to spurn the extra three million to go to L.A. instead of Seattle, where there's more of an influx of fellow Japanese players like Ichiro Suzuki and Kenji Johjima. If that's the case, then Torre has already started earning his money before making his first Dodger double switch.

With the Los Angeles already adding Jon Garland to a strong rotation, and Torii Hunter to their lineup, the Mariners realize that if they're going to overtake the Halos out west in 2008, they're going to have to make some improvements to their roster.

Most specifically, their pitching staff. That's why the team has been trying so hard to sign Japanese pitcher Hiroki Kuroda, and that's why they're going after Baltimore's Erik Bedard. Seattle is rumored to be a favorite to land Kuroda's services, and now according to one source within the Orioles, they're the front runner to land Erik Bedard as well.

Bedard, on the other hand, was pursued aggressively by more than 10 teams, including the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Mets, Seattle Mariners, Toronto Blue Jays and Cincinnati Reds. One team source agreed with the assessment that the Mariners have emerged as one of the front-runners to land Bedard, with young center fielder Adam Jones as the centerpiece of the package coming back to the Orioles.

Now I don't think that adding Bedard and Kuroda would all of a sudden vault the Mariners past the Angels in the AL West's hierarchy, but it will definitely put them in a better position to compete.

It should be noted though, that just because Seattle is in the lead for Bedard, it doesn't mean they're going to get them. If the Orioles are going to trade Bedard, they're going to want a teams top couple of prospects in return, not just one of them. So there's no guarantee that the previously untouchable Adam Jones will be enough to get a deal done.

By all accounts, the Mariners are the front runner for Hiroki Kuroda's services in 2008. They're main competition are the Dodgers and Diamondbacks, but all things equal, I think Seattle is probably the best destination for Kuroda.

It had also been reported earlier that the Mariners were the only team vying for Kuroda that had made a four-year offer to the Japanese free agent. Those reports were false. According to the Mariners, they never offered Kuroda anything more than a three-year deal worth between $27 and $30 million.

That doesn't mean Bill Bavasi isn't willing to go to a four-year offer if that's what it takes to sign him. In fact, he may have done so already.

"Sometimes you have to assume that you're signing the right guy," Bavasi said as the final full day of meetings concluded at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center. "If you're going to go out and sign a free-agent pitcher you have to have the confidence to feel like you're signing the right guy.

"And if you are and he's healthy, and you think he's going to stay healthy, why wouldn't you want to have him for three or four years? Because the market keeps going up. In that third and fourth year, you may have a very cheap option."

Aside from pursuing Kuroda, Bavasi as also been in talks with the Orioles about trading for Erik Bedard. Much like everybody else though, both sides are keeping their eyes on Minnesota to see what happens with Johan Santana. Then both sides will have a better idea what the going rate for somebody like Bedard really is.

Now that the Mariners are seemingly out of the Johan Santana sweepstakes, they can turn their full attention to signing Japanese pitcher Hiroki Kuroda. The other teams vying for Kuroda's services along with Seattle are the Dodgers and Diamondbacks.

It's believed that the Mariners have offered Kuroda a 4-year deal worth $44 million, while the Dodgers and Diamondbacks are only offering him three years. Both teams don't seem to be willing to offer the fourth year like Seattle.

So when you combine the four year offer, along with the Mariners history of signing Japanese players, and multiply all that by the fact that Seattle's scout Yashushi Yamamoto was a lifelong friend of Kuroda's late father, that means the Mariners have this one in the bag, right?

Nope.

With little knowledge of the U.S. major leagues, Kuroda is relying on Japanese agent Katsuhito Osaka and former major league pitcher Shigetoshi Hasegawa as his advisers, the source said. They will have more say in where Kuroda, who is reportedly quite nervous about the move to the U.S., will land than anyone on this side of the Pacific.

Osaka has close connections to the Dodgers, having brokered deals to bring Japanese players Kazuhisa Ishii and Takashi Saito to L.A. Hasegawa played for the Mariners, yes, but he also played for the Angels and continues to live in the Los Angeles area.

Personally, I'd go with Seattle if I were Kuroda, but then again, I am a greedy bastard.

We already know that the Mariners are in hot pursuit of Japanese right-hander Hiroki Kuroda, and now we can officially put the Diamondbacks on the list, as well. GM Josh Byrnes confirmed that he made an official offer to the free agent and is now simply waiting to hear back. From the Arizona Republic:

"It's a slow process," he said. "He's still sifting through it and deciding the priority order of things - what clubs he might want to visit and what clubs he might want to cross off the list."

Unless Byrnes is prepared to blow Kuroda out of the water, I have to imagine the Mariners are still the leading contender by default, just as they are for most Japanese stars making the jump. The team is owned by former Nintendo bigwigs and has been huge in Japan ever since signing Ichiro Suzuki and Kazuhiro Sasaki. Beyond a cultural perspective, Seattle is also more attractive because of the home park: Chase Field is still one of the more hitter-friendly parks in the games, while Safeco trends toward favoring pitchers.

In any case, I wouldn't expect to see this situation resolved soon. In all likelihood, he's not going to make his decision looking at offers on a piece of paper, he's going to travel around the country visiting teams and letting them bid against each other. Remember: he's a free agent in his home country so there is no expensive posting fee to talk to him, which means teams will have that much more money to throw in his direction.

Seattle Mariners general manager Bill Bavasi and manager John McLaren just returned from a trip to Japan. They weren't on some kind of romantic getaway or anything, they were there for business. Business and probably a massage or two.

Between massages they focused on talking to Japanese free agent pitcher Hiroki Kuroda to try and persuade him to leave Japan and come to the United States to play alongside Ichiro Suzuki and Kenji Johjima.

"The Mariners are interested in Kuroda and have just returned to Seattle from Japan where they met with our client,"[Kuroda's] agent Joe Urbon wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Now I don't follow Japanese baseball as closely as I'm sure all of you do, but I'm told that Kuroda is a 32-year old righty with a mid-90's fastball, and pinpoint control. In his eleven seasons pitching for Hiroshima, Kuroda is 103-89 with a 3.69 ERA.

He opted out of his current four-year $10 million deal before last season, and therefore he's not going to be as costly as Daisuke Matsuzaka was last year. Which is good and bad news for the Mariners. The good news is that they'll be able to get him relatively cheap if he does decide to come to the States. The bad news is that since he isn't going to be as costly, other teams like the Chicago Cubs are interested in his services as well.

Still, Kuroda has expressed he'd like to play for a west coast team should he decide to come to the Majors, and with Seattle's history of signing Japanese players, I'd consider the Mariners the favorite to get him if he comes.

The Indians dipped into the Japanese talent pool for the first time on Tuesday, signing Masahide Kobayashi to a two-year deal. Kobayashi has been one of Japan's top closers for several seasons, tallying at least 20 saves in each of the past seven years and has a career 2.79 ERA. From MLB.com:

"The signing of Masa Kobayashi marks the first contract ever signed by a Japanese professional baseball player into the Cleveland Indians franchise and, more importantly, accomplishes one of our primary offseason goals of adding depth to the back end of our bullpen," said general manager Mark Shapiro. "Masa has pitched and succeeded at the highest level and on the biggest stage of the Japanese Professional Baseball League. He should be a valuable addition to our bullpen."

It's still not known what kind of money Kobayashi signed for, but it's worth noting that he was a free agent and therefore did not cost the Indians an expensive posting fee just to negotiate. He's not quite as heralded as outfielder Kosuke Fukodome or starting pitcher Hiroki Kuroda, but then again, neither was Hideki Okajima last winter, who went from being an afterthought to Daisuke Matsuzaka heading into spring training to an All-Star reliever who finished with a 2.22 ERA and 0.97 WHIP as a rookie.

The Indians, meanwhile, are setting themselves up to have a dominant bullpen yet again. Their bullpen ranked fourth in the AL with a 3.73 ERA and first with 49 saves. Then again, it also ranked second to last in innings pitched (441 1/3), which means the 'pen averaged just 2.7 innings a game. That's a function of a strong rotation, and it's not rare to see a team's starting pitching struggle the year after a lengthy playoff run (see: White Sox in 2006, Detroit Tigers in 2007), so bolstering the relief corps is a wise move.