Igawa and Matsuzaka, How Will the Japanese Imports Fare This Year?

There has been a tremendous amount of speculation this Spring regarding how well the Japanese pitching imports, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Kei Igawa will do this year in the Major Leagues. Particularly, Daisuke, or Dice, now with the Boston Red Sox. (Igawa is with the Yankees.)

Most people are taking a wait and see approach attitude, feeling that both can pitch in the Majors, but unsure how well. Is there some way to try and figure out how these two Japanese stars will do before they even play one Major League game? Yes, there is. A small number of Japanese pitchers have already made the transition to the Majors, and by studying their records in Japan and comparing how those records translated to the Majors, we can get a rough idea how two new imports might fare this year.

So let's look at the stats of the Japanese players who have already played in the Majors.

Hideo Nomo - record in Japan: 3.15 ERA/ 10.3 K's/ 5.0 BB's. Record in the majors: 4.21 ERA/ 8.7 K's/ 4.1 BB's. So his ERA is 34% higher, his K rate is 16% lower, and his BB rate is 18% Lower.

Hideki Irabu - little hesitant to use him, because he was not really pitching at the highest level in Japan, but here's the stats. Japan: 3.42 ERA/ 9.1 K's/ 4.1 BB's. Record in Majors: 5.15 ERA/ 7.1 K's/ 3.1 BB's. So his ERA is 50 % higher, his K rate is 22% lower and his BB rate is also 24% Lower.

Kaz Sasaki - record in Japan: 2.33 ERA/ 12.5 K's/ 3.7 BB's. Record in Majors: 3.14 ERA/ 9.8 K's/ 3.1 BB's. So his ERA is 35% higher, his K rate is 22% lower, and his BB rate is also 16% Lower.

Akinori Otsuka - record in Japan: 2.39 ERA/ 12.2 K's/ 3.0 BB's. Record so far in Majors: 2.43 ERA/ 8.7 K's/ 3.2 BB's. So his ERA is 2% higher, his K rate is 29% lower, and his BB rate is 7% higher.

Takashi Saito - record in Japan: 3.89 ERA/ 7.6 K's/ 2.6 BB's. So far in Majors: 2.07 ERA/ 12.3 K's/ 2.6 BB's. So his ERA is 47% Lower, his K rate is 38% Higher and his BB rate is the same.

So the average ERA of these pitchers is 15% higher here than in Japan. But a lot of that is from Saito's one great year in LA. Factor out Saito, and the average is 30% higher. My opinion is that Igawa and Matsuzaka are both, on average, better pitchers than these guys, especially Nomo and Irabu, the two starters on the list. I'm comfortable saying they will probably pitch to around 20% higher ERA's here, then they did in Japan.

The average K rate is 10.2% lower, but again factoring out Saito, it's 22.2 % lower. I'm comfortable saying the translation will be around 15% lower.

The average BB rate of the five is actually Lower here than it was in Japan by about 10%. I'm comfortable lowering the BB rate of the two imports by about 5% from what they were in Japan.

So what do we end up with.

Kei Igawa - record in Japan: 3.30 ERA, 8.6 K's/ 2.7 BB's. That could translate into: 3.96 ERA/ 7.3 K's and 2.6 BB's.

Daisuke Matsuzaka - record in Japan: 2.94 ERA/ 8.7 K's/ 3.2 BB's. That could translate into: 3.53 ERA/ 7.4 K's/ 3.0 K's.

I'm much more comfortable with Igawa's translated numbers than I am with Dice's, because Igawa's home park here, Yankee Stadium, should help him greatly, while Fenway will probably hurt Dice's numbers some.

As the 2007 season starts, the baseball fans of two nations are going to be tuned in to see how well these two Japanese stars do pitching in the Major Leagues this year. It's going to be a very interesting year.