The Best Young Pitcher in the World
This post was written by the team behind NEIFI, a projection system and systematic evaluation methodology about which you can read more at their site. They also tweet @NEIFIco, and have started their own blog as well.
We’re NEIFI. We build decision systems for teams, systems that produce both evaluations and valuations. Increasingly, there’s a need for such systems to work globally, both in the literal and metaphorical sense of the word; decision makers must be able to intelligently compare the relative values of draft picks, Korean free agents, a prospect, and 30-year-old big leaguer with two years and $30 million left on his contract. We’ve now been working explicitly with international leagues for about five years, and for much longer with domestic evaluations and valuations. We believe our methodology helps to put players from wildly different contexts on a neutral playing field for cross-comparison.
A few weeks ago, members of the Baseball Writers Association of America chose Jake Arrieta as the recipient of the 2015 NL Cy Young Award, even though it’s generally agreed upon that Clayton Kershaw is currently the best pitcher on the planet right now. NEIFI has little interest in awards voting (or the subsequent debates), but we do enjoy estimating the future. Here’s how our system projects the top 10 overall talent levels among starting pitchers going into 2016, simply on a rate basis. This uses the ERA scale; league average is fixed at 4.00, and an average SP is around 4.13:
| Name | 2016 | Age |
| Kershaw, Clayton | 2.35 | 28 |
| Fernandez, Jose | 2.75 | 24 |
| Sale, Chris | 2.87 | 27 |
| Arrieta, Jake | 3.01 | 30 |
| Scherzer, Max | 3.03 | 32 |
| Otani, Shohei | 3.08 | 22 |
| Keuchel, Dallas | 3.13 | 29 |
| Kluber, Corey | 3.15 | 30 |
| Price, David | 3.15 | 31 |
| Strasburg, Stephen | 3.16 | 28 |
| Darvish, Yu | 3.19 | 30 |
So we actually cheated: there are 11 pitchers included there, because as you may notice, one of them is not currently pitching in Major League Baseball. Shohei Otani’s dominance may not be groundbreaking news if you follow Japanese baseball to some degree, but we find that it’s still interesting to put his projectoin in this context. And for the sake of corroborating his gaudy ranking above, consider Darvish, who actually played for the same team in Japan.
Below is a comparison of Otani’s 2015 and Darvish’s 2011 — far and away his best season in Japan — with the main components relative to the league average in those seasons:
| Name, League-Season | K/BF | BB/BF | BABIP | HR/BIP |
| Darvish, 2010 PL | +13.3% | -2.5% | -1.4% | -0.5% |
| Otani, 2015 PL | +13.5% | -1.4% | -3.7% | 0.0% |
In a strict component sense, Otani’s 2015 was effectively equivalent to Darvish’s best season. Now, here’s the kicker: Darvish pitched 2011 at ages 24-25, while Otani began his 2015 at age 20, and didn’t turn 21 until the summer. To describe that as “remarkable” seems to be a severe understatement. So then, given that he’s still just 21, and projecting as the world’s 8th-best SP on a rate basis, should we one day expect Otani to be the best starting pitcher in the world?
Let’s spoil one thing immediately. He shouldn’t be expected to top Kershaw’s current mark of 2.35. Kershaw is simply a singularity. But that doesn’t preclude the possibility that Kershaw would decline more aggressively than expected, at a time while Otani is still at his peak.
Given that, here’s the expected peak rate projections for everyone who is 24 or younger as of July 1, 2016:
| Name | Peak | 2016 Age |
| Fernandez, Jose | 2.66 | 24 |
| Otani, Shohei | 2.76 | 22 |
| Urias, Julio | 3.37 | 20 |
| Severino, Luis | 3.42 | 22 |
| Syndergaard, Noah | 3.42 | 24 |
| McCullers, Lance | 3.52 | 23 |
| Fujinami, Shintaro | 3.59 | 22 |
| Walker, Taijuan | 3.60 | 24 |
| Rodriguez, Eduardo | 3.60 | 23 |
| Berrios, Jose | 3.70 | 22 |
| Rodon, Carlos | 3.78 | 24 |
| Nola, Aaron | 3.82 | 23 |
With apologies to the Japanese, it appears a dominant Cuban is expected to hold onto the crown, but Otani is the only pitcher alive that our system expects to put up a significant challenge to Jose Fernandez for that title.
It’s true Fernandez suffered a major arm injury — although his performance barely noticed, as his 2015 return was typically remarkable — and, just generally speaking, things are unpredictable. If these pitchers remained in this order for several years, that would be by far the most remarkable outcome of all. These are simply our estimates from this point forward. It does, though, seem that Otani and Fernandez are in a class of their own; no other pitcher is within 0.6 runs per nine innings, which is an enormous gap.
Sidebar: is it perhaps telling that the top four pitchers here were not raised within American pitching conventions? They’re from Cuba, Japan, Mexico, and the Dominican, respectively. Those four nations added together don’t eclipse the total population of the U.S. That’s another post entirely, but also worth pointing out.
We made this list 12 deep, instead of 10, because it includes 10 currently domestic players, plus Otani as well as another Japanese pitcher: Shintaro Fujinami. Fujinami who scouts enjoy tossing back-and-forth in comparison to Otani, is a similar combination of remarkable dominance and youth. Otani definitely appears to be the better pitcher, but it is enjoyable to watch the 6-foot-6, whippy-armed Fujinami consistently sit 95-96.
Unfortunately for fans looking to see Otani (or Fujinami) in the U.S. any time soon, the new Japanese posting rules have a lousy unintended consequence. When the posting fees were capped at $20 million, it was applauded as a bridge to prevent the Yankees and Red Sox from being the only ones able to afford top Japanese talent, though we’d point out that those teams frequently wound up with Matsuzakas and Igawas, while plenty of great value like Suzuki, Uehara, Aoki, Otsuka, Darvish, Iwakuma, and Iguchi went to mid-or-small-market teams.
The other edge of that knife, though, is that you ensure it will virtually impossible for it to be worth it for the Fighters to post Otani anytime soon. While the economic scale is different in NPB, there’s no chance multiple seasons of Otani would be valued at less than $20 million. Without a change in the system, it is unlikely that Otani will be pitching in MLB any time soon.
In the case of Otani, it seems like we may be missing out on something truly special. Someone who would indeed be a serious Cy Young contender within the current generation, while being younger than most pitchers still popping up on various prospect lists. If he ever does make his way to MLB, expect unprecedented levels of interest for an unprecedented young arm.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
One looming hurdle is that Otani likes hitting and there’s a pretty tiny chance than an MLB team would let him hit when not pitching. The Dodgers tried to sign him before he entered the NPB draft (where he knew it’d be years before he would have a chance to go to MLB again), but he opted not to sign because the Dodgers reportedly wouldn’t let him hit. It’ll take a VERY progressive team that’s flexible with Otani to convince him to sign (OR one that’s willing to pay him enough to make it a moot point).
http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/12912627/two-way-player-shohei-otani-throws-strikes-smashes-home-runs-japan-next-big-export
I don’t know if he would turn down a 10 million dollar a year pay raise because his new team won’t let him play outfield when he isn’t pitching. And I don’t know if I would call a team that let their pitcher play outfield on their off days “progressive”.
I love it that Otani was included in this article. Reading the title that was the first name that came to my mind, and I was not too far off
So why should we believe that Otani and Fujinami are this good? Projecting them would be much more difficult/imprecise than current major leaguers. What is your system doing to come up with those valuations?
I am also curious about this. If the goal of your projection system is to compare a broad range of players, what is the basis of that comparison? I notice that you charted the “Top 10 Overall Talent” going in to 2016. Is that just a matter of normalizing performance/projection to a certain standard, and if so, what is your projection doing that others aren’t?
I don’t know about the projections but the old fashioned scouting report certainly backs up the numbers. His fastball touches 100 mph and he throws a 90 mph splitter off of that? Woof.
Otani has three plus pitches and sits in the high 90s. One could make a case for him having some of the best raw stuff for a starter in the world, let alone for his age. Also, he was the best pitcher in the second best baseball league in the world, at age 20.
That’s debatable. Gerrit Cole, Jose Fernandez, and Noah Syndergaard are all built better, tougher than Otani and throw just as hard if not harder.
Well, I said you could make a case for him, not that he has the best stuff.
But as far as those players being “built better” and “tougher” and throwing harder,
Otani is 6’4, 200, and regularly breaks 100 (he sometimes sits 98 for a game)
Cole is 6’4, 230, and sometimes breaks 100
Fernandez is 6’2, 215, and touches 99
Syndergaard is 6’6″, 240, and sometimes breaks 100
Plus if the comparisons you come up with are Cole, Fernandez, and Syndergaard, I don’t see how that’s supposed to mean Otani doesn’t have some of the best raw stuff in the world for a starter.
I’d say the build argument you throw is debatable as well. Otani’s at least 6’4, and in the recent outings I’ve seen, he looks at least 220. Tougher in the sense of bigger, I’d say yeah since those three are 240+, but I’d definitely say that isn’t necessarily “better”. In terms of fastball velocity, Syndergaard and Otani are neck and neck. Cole’s slightly slower on average and Fernandez is a couple ticks slower than Cole.
NPB Fan: looks like we’ve responded the same way, but there’s no way Cole’s only 230, and there’s absolutely no way Fernandez is 215. Cole’s gotta be at least 240 and Fernandez is definitely over 230.
They obviously can’t divulge their secret sauce since it’s their business, but there have been many Japanese pitchers in the Major Leagues so far, so it’s not much of a stretch to project. With guys like Fujinami and Otani who, like Darvish, actually project similarly to MLB “power pitchers”, it’s even easier than with guys like Iwakuma, Igawa, Maeda, etc. These guys have big frames, throw hard, and flash multiple above average breaking pitches. We also know that the level of competition in the NPB is a bit higher than AAA in the US, so we can compare to the transition Minor Leaguers made from AAA to the Majors, too.
I understand that there is past Japanese pitcher data to go on, but it’s not obvious that based on it you’d expect Otani to immediately be as good as Max Scherzer. That’s why I’m wondering what they’re taking into account.
I also understand that they can’t tell us exactly how it works, but I have a very good idea of what Steamer and ZiPS do and that hasn’t harmed their business. I guess I just don’t really see the point of presenting outputs from a total black box in a Fangraphs article like this, with no track record that readers can use to judge how much meaning to give to the system. Their website is also bare.
Any talk of adjusting that cap on posting fees? I would think MLB would recognize the need for change if their own rule was preventing the best international players from having a realistic chance of playing in their league.
The dude was COMFORTABLY sitting 98-101 throughout the whole game in the Premier 12 against Korea. Explosive fastball – probably the best fastball of any under 26 pitcher in the world. Only Chapman really sticks out as having a better one.
why *did* the japanese teams agree to cap the fee? i didn’t understand that at the time and i still don’t
Japenese teams didn’t really have a choice. MLB has all of the power in the global leagues relationship. MLB decides to let Japanese and Korean teams keep their young players through a certain age/experience level because they recognize it’s a good concept for growing the game globally. When Cuba opens up, I expect a similar system will be developed.
They keep the best domestic talent at home and makes it harder for the MOB to poach them.
It is not an unintended consequence that this makes it harder for players to be posted.
If you’re into filthy stuff, check out a splitter from the gods here (@ 5:08):
https://youtu.be/TXqxLJRfsr8?t=305
If anyone can watch the link and tell me if the pitch he’s throwing at 150kph (~93mph) is a straight change he’s adopted recently or just him changing speeds somehow with his fastball, that would be fun.
He was sitting 98-101 with his 4-seam, ~82-83 with his slider, 87 with the splitter, and 92-93 with the straight change looking pitch.
Sure looks like a fastball to me. It’d be cool if he was stepping the ladder from the previous pitch and only going up to 93 knowing that he could throw one even harder for strike 3.
That is likely his forkball, which tends to sit in the low 90s.
There’s no drop at all though, and I saw it multiple times – all straight. I tend to think it’s him dialing down his 4-seam or just a straight change. Either way, very exciting to see a 20 year old able to pitch like that.
Fastball – http://www2.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Shohei+Otani+Japan+v+South+Korea+WBSC+Premier+BVqbPQN9nu6l.jpg
Change – http://www2.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Shohei+Otani+South+Korea+v+Japan+WBSC+Premier+0J55k8pzBkxl.jpg
Split – http://www1.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Shohei+Otani+Japan+v+South+Korea+WBSC+Premier+mKwo5ACCGSSl.jpg
Curve? – http://www1.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Shohei+Otani+Samurai+Japan+v+MLB+Stars+LHxX9qyijCdl.jpg
Awesome, thanks! It’s definitely a straight change then. The last one must be the slider. It was nasty in that game.
I’m into filthy stuff!
*clicks link*
Sooooo disappointing. 1/10 needs more filth. Depravity, even.
I’m wondering if a sort of “intended-unintended” consequence of capping the posting fee at 20 million is that Japanese baseball gets to keep many of its young stars for a longer period.
I was watching some of excellent Ken Burns documentary this weekend–specifically the part where Jackie Robinson integrates MLB. As more players were taken by MLB from the Negro Leagues, the Negro Leagues began to suffer. Both in the quality of play and in attendance.
Obviously, the death of the Negro Leagues was a small price to pay to have MLB integrated. But in the case of Japanese Baseball, are we (MLB) extracting too large a price, from the standpoint of the Japanese Professional Leagues?
interesting point, re: my question above about why the japanese teams ever agreed to the new plan. probably the best guess i’ve seen
This was interesting.
FYI typo in the paragraph right below the first spreadsheet, “projectoin”.
Nice work!
It’s likely Otani could soon play in the MLB, if he so wishes.
Upon coming out of high school, it was known that MLB teams would line up to sign Otani, and that his goals do include playing in the majors. He supposedly told teams not to draft him because he wanted to go to the US to play, but the Fighters drafted him anyway. It’s common knowledge in Japanese baseball circles that the only reason he signed is due to a gentleman’s agreement they have. This agreement states that 1) the Fighters would post Otani at his discretion, and 2) the Fighters would allow Otani to play in the field and hit.
TLDR, Otani only signed in the first place because he has a handshake agreement saying he can be posted whenever he wants.
It’s actually funny that MLB teams went after two tall fire-throwing lefty pitchers from the same HS (Hanamaki Higashi). Though Kikuchi Yuusei was injured in his senior year at Koushien and was never the same.
Both Ootani and Fujinami looks to be the real deal, translating their successes from HS to NPB. Fireballers in Japan fall to the same problems in the US – if you can’t locate, it doesn’t matter how hard you throw. Hifumi Shinta is a good example of that. Ootani will probably never play both ways here (God forbid he gets injured swinging), but for an NL club he won’t be the easy out at the bottom (if he’s put there in the first place).
For the Top SP Projections for 2016, I am surprised to see Kluber, Strasburg, and Darvish ahead of Jacob deGrom.
Also ahead of Matt Harvey, which is interesting, since he just put up one of the best seasons ever for a guy returning from TJ.
This entire exercise is actually pretty silly.
I think I’d rather have Syndergaard.
And here I am just waiting for Tomohiro Anraku
http://www.baseballamerica.com/high-school/tomohiro-anraku-threw-772-pitches-9-days-returns-npb-debut/
He actually made his NPB debut late in the season this year after spending most the year in the minors. His velocity has dropped some.
He actually got injured his senior year, and his stock naturally dropped. Not sure if he’ll be the same, and if he does it will probably take some time.