Another Market Inefficiency (or a Productive Bargain Bin)
Question: what do these guys all have in common?
Answer: all found homes on Major League pitching staffs after returning from stints in Japan. And I don’t need to remind this audience that Lewis, Vogelsong and Resop have pitched their best MLB ball since coming back.
I focused this list on the last year or two, but if we turn the clock back a little further, we can add Pedro Feliciano to this list. And if we lower the bar a bit to “Major League innings”, we’ll find Japan returnees like Cedrick Bowers, Buddy Carlyle, Justin Germano and Brian Sweeney. And if we include returnees from Korea, we can include Brad Thomas on the list (though Thomas spent time in Japan before playing in Korea).
For most of these guys there was nothing about their time in Japan that hinted at future MLB success. Of the pitchers I’ve mentioned, only Lewis and Atchison really had successful tenures in NPB. Lewis we know all about. Atchison was great in Hanshin’s bullpen in 2009, posting a 0.89 WHIP in 90 relief innings. The rest of the guys, though, didn’t fare well. Vogelsong spent three mostly uneventful years in Japan, making 32 starts over two seasons for Hanshin before spending a year as an occasional long man in Orix’s bullpen. Loe got all of five games to prove himself with Softbank in 2009, which was two more than they gave Carrasco in 2006. Resop couldn’t throw strikes for Hanshin, and finished his NPB career with a 6.75 ERA in 21.1 innings.
If there’s a secret to this, I can’t readily identify it. Maybe playing against a different type of competition elicits a different set of baseball skills, or maybe living abroad inspires improved focus or maturity. Maybe it’s just that these guys are all talented pitchers who played themselves on to 25-man rosters before winding up in Japan, and figured things out after a couple extra trips around the block.
So who might be next? I was hoping that Chris Bootcheck would have a Resop-style renaissance this season, after being overlooked by Yokohama last year, but he did his usual thing in 3A and has signed with the Lotte Giants of Korea. Among players currently active in Japan, Anthony Lerew is currently taking up a roster spot on Softbank’s farm team, so we might see him back in MLB-affiliated ball next year. Dennis Sarfate is enjoying breakout success with Hiroshima, with 48 strikeouts against only seven walks in 32.1 relief innings. His teammate Bryan Bullington has a 2.23 ERA through 96.2 innings, though without the dominant strikeout total. And Alfredo Figaro has had a nice first half as a mostly six-inning starter for Orix.
Every year, the 12 Japanese teams collectively carry 70 or so foreign players on their rosters. About half of these turn over from year to year. Some move on to Taiwan, Korea or Mexico, others retire, but many return to MLB affiliated ball. Some of the pitchers that do will find themselves pitching Major League innings after they return, and maybe we’ll even see another Vogelsong at some point.
Patrick Newman is a veteran enthusiast of Japanese baseball who happens to write about it at npbtracker.com, and on Twitter @npbtracker.
Free Matt Murton!
Finally, a ‘market inefficiency’ article that isn’t satire
I know, right?
I thought it was going to be about the arm strength of oragutans.
HAHA! these ‘market efficiency articles have been terrible….but this one is a good read.
Can we send Brad Thomas back there?
maybe it gives them some time learning to be aggressive and also learning to get the off speed stuff over since the guys in NPB are less likely to hit it quite as far ?
I still think it’s disappointing that no-one gave Resop a shot as a starter after his dominance at AAA in that role. Even though his work as a reliever doesn’t translate into the profile of a plus starter, he’s still posted excellent K rates, and his mid 90s heater could still be very strong if he had to dial it back and stretch himself out. Okay, so he might not be that great, but there’s enough pitching starved teams out there that I thought he might get a shot (Cincinnati, are you listening?)
Sarfate would be the guy I’d pick to have the most success if he came back. He’s always had good really good stuff.
Does the Japan league have PitchF/X yet? If not, we may never know what translates from one league to the other.
Eric Stults brings the average back down.
Isn’t Brian Bannister in Japan right now? Laugh all you want, but I think there is still a little production left in him before it’s all said and done. He’s a very smart guy so hopefully he’ll figure something out.
Banny signed with Yomiuri and spent spring training with them, but left after the earthquake and never went back. He’s on Yomiuri’s restricted list at the moment and isn’t going to play anywhere this season.
A Chris Bootcheck sighting!
In Japan more hitters just try to make contact then here, so that is the main reason why we are seeing success. Pitchers are learning how to pitch instead of just trying to get outs with good stuff.
You forgot Wilson Valdez. He had his first MLB win this year.
My money is on the unexciting explanation that these guys are simply late bloomers. Call it maturation or “figuring it out” if you will, but maybe in baseball as in life there are just some people who put it together early and some who (given a chance) put it together later.
We’re generally talking about people in their early to mid 30’s – past their theoretical athletic peak, but not “old” by MLB standards, so why is it not possible they just needed more development time, which NPB et al are only too happy to provide? It’s not the career arc we “expect” of professional ballplayers, but if we’re talking about people who go from MLB to Japan and back again we’re obviously starting with statistical outliers to begin with.
Now that I’m thinking of it, maybe there is a more general lesson. I think that in any endeavor that combines physical and mental aspects, such as baseball or playing a musical instrument, a person has a physical peak and a mental peak. Perhaps for the average professional athlete these two different peaks are close enough together as to make no difference – if someone peaked physically at 25 but mentally at 27 could we really observe the difference amidst all the other noise? If this is the case, then perhaps for the Colby Lewis’s of the world it is nothing more profound than these two peaks being so far apart as to be observable.
I definately agree. It’s why I hate putting a lot of stock in flame throwers. Sure they have amazing stuff, but when that fizzles out, they have no idea how to pitch. Their 97 turns into 92, which is still MLB good, but they don’t know how to pitch. They’re so used to blowing it by guys and they give up.
Do hitters learn to make more contact in Japan?
Maybe it’s like a trip to the minors? Maybe they can work on things against better competition than AAA but still not the level of the bigs?
Why not you mention the name, “Brian Falkenborg”?
From 2009, his first NPB season, he has established himself as arguably the best set-up man (and also probably the best reliever even if you include closers) in NPB.
His career lines is as follows (as of July 12, 2011):
1.65 ERA, 136.2 IP, 11.99 K/9, 1.71 (BB+HBP)/9, 3 HRs allowed
Is his performance still insufficient that you left him away, or just too ridiculous to overlook it?
Falkenborg has a two-year contract that runs through 2012, and re-signed with Softbank without much consideration of an MLB comeback. I was specifically looking at guys who could come back next year.
I’d bet on Bullington. He looked really good in a few starts for the Royals last year. Alas, they sold him to the Japanese team, right before they DFA’s Phil Humber. Of course, it was totally justified that they only gave those guys 30+ innings between them before jettisoning them. It’s not like they were going to take Kyle Davies’ spot. Royals baseball, catch it!
Never thought I’d see the words “looked really good” and “Bryan Bullington” in the same sentence unless its was the following –
The chances looked really good that Bryan Bullington would still be a diastrous #1 overall pick even before his shoulder exploded.
Color me unconvinced.
Sure, there are some players who’ve made stunning comebacks after going to East Asia, but far more go there to watch their careers die. Japan is like the independent leagues; you should always have a scout or two there checking out what kind of talent is available, but you should never expect to find a quality MLB player, because the fact is the vast majority of them aren’t.
It’d be one thing if players who come back were on average, well, average, but you have a few great stories, a few “oh look, he’s back for a season” players, and a ton of half-seasons in the minors as a last grasp before retirement. And the Japanese players don’t have a particularly impressive success rate either; there’s Ichiro, and then there’s Dice-K and Kei Igawa and Kaz Matsui. In fact, Ichiro is just about the only star that’s come out of Japan that I can think of.
Bottom line, nearly any pitcher who’s good enough to crack a ML roster isn’t going to go to Japan, so while the nonzero success rate of Japanese players and returning players means you can’t completely ignore it, this isn’t really a market inefficiency so much as checking the freezer for your car keys after you’ve searched the house for half an hour.
That said, I agree it’s the best entry in this pitiful series so far.
I wouldn’t say Ichiro is the only Japanese MLB star (although he’s had by far the most staying power.) Hideki Matsui and Hideo Nomo were both legitimate stars at their best, and we’ve also seen a few relief aces like Kaz Sasaki and Takashi Saito.
Furthermore, while it’s true that there haven’t been many really great Japanese players, it’s also true that there have been quite a few productive MLB regulars from Japan. The Tad Iguchis and Hiroki Kurodas of the world provide real value. True, most of them have fairly short MLB careers, but that’s because they come over at an older age and typically return to Japan as soon as their skills start to drop off.
What happened to Ryan Sadowski?