Lance as usual breaking down japanese prospects for us to digest
I think he’s too low on Saiki.
The kid is nasty, just needs some polishing.
Def gonna be a bidding war for Imai but Saiki isn’t bad of a consolation prize
I think it’s the fastball man, imanaga was lights out early out and almost unhittable when he came but now the league has adjusted to it. If your FB is slow and doesn’t does a lot, you would get bad eventually. Like they will start sitting on offspeed/breaking and wait you to throw your below MLB pace FB.
Saiki has elite extension, high arm slot and elite spin. He also dialled it up to 99 mph in the past. He once said that he admired his team mate Fujinami and that he one day hoped to throw 100 mph as well.
Yes, he does not get a lot of whiffs on it anymore, but a team needs to do a 360 analysis on him like they did with Roki Sasaki and help him regain his velo. The guy might actually have one of the nastiest fastballs out there.
With all due respect, throwing 99 mph once in a while and averaging 99 for an entire game are entirely different things. Roki had shoulder injury to blame for his drop in velo, i think the next season will tell us how he would do in mlb as a starter. Also saiki was never as good as roki was in NPB and Sasaki is much younger. Look at shohei averaging above 99 FB for 100 pitches in a game. Saiki might gain a velo or two to have around 95 MPH average FB but without some extremely special movement on his offspeed and breaking stuff, I don’t see a lot of upside. I think his ceiling would be around league average or slightly above average pitcher. Imai though has a greater ceiling. I am actually more intrigued about hiroya miyagi at the moment, that kid is super young and all his advanced metrics look really good.
Shohei averaged 99mph with ease too, it didn’t look like he was putting that much on it.
Since you are a Yankee fan, I would recommend Cashman to go for all four guys. Outside Murakami (he will fetch a big contract), I think the others will be reasonable contracts for the value they will bring. I think guys such as Bregman and Alonso will demand such a massive contract this offseason that you can basically sign Imai, Saiki and Okamoto. But I think Cashman will go for these big whales again and construct an unbalanced team.
Maybe if the Yankees get him, they can Schlittler him and make him throw harder
They’re going to look great in LA/OKC
“aLL JaPKnEEz R DoDgEr”