Twins Interested in..... Kawakami?

by lookatthosetwins on Dec 17, 2008 1:44 AM EST Comment 5 comments

According to MLB Trade Rumors, the twins may be interested in Kenshin Kawakami. This is surprising to say the least, and probably won't amount to anything. If you are wondering who the heck Kawakami is, well, you aren't alone. Here's what I could find out.

Kawakami is a 33 year old pitcher who pitches in the central league in Japan. Here are the numbers for his last 3 seasons.

	Starts	k/9	BB/9	Hr/9	ERA
2006	22	8.1	1.6	0.9	2.51
2007	26	7.8	1.2	1.0	3.55
2008	16	8.8	2.0	0.9	2.30
*Career*	214	7.3	1.9	0.9	3.22

So he looks like a very good pitcher, although pretty inconsistent. Also I think he was hurt some of last year, which would explain his 16 starts.

He apparantly doesn't have overpowering stuff, but has good control and changes speeds very well. Sounds like someone the twins would target. He also doesn't have as deceptive of windup as some other Japanese players.

So he seems like a good enough pitcher. But why exactly would the Twins be targeting him? Tim says we could be adding depth in order to make a trade. This makes sense, possibly allowing us to trade away a starter for Beltre?

This is just a rumor from one guy, and there are plenty of other suitors, so the chances of us picking him up seem pretty slim. It's good to know that they're checking all available options out there though.

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Twins in Japan

Maybe this is changing, but the Twins don’t even have scouts in Japan because they don’t want to deal with the bidding wars, etc. for these players. Too bad, really, cause they let one go to the Rays when they really could have used a top-quality infielder. But, for the most part, I’m OK with their stance. I’d be very surprised if they signed a Japanese player.

"You're thinking too much. Just have fun." -- Bennie "The Jet" Rodriguez in Sandlot

by cmathewson on Dec 17, 2008 8:45 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

http://www.baseball-reference.com/i/iwamuak01.shtml

problem was he wasn’t all the great. or even good.

1941 .406

by FrozenTed9 on Dec 19, 2008 3:04 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I would say good

Over the last two years, he’s been about an average offensive player. But he’s been playing second base, and has been about average defensively. An average defensive second basemen hitting league average is an above average player. Even a league average hitter playing third would have been an upgrade for us. It still would.

by lookatthosetwins on Dec 22, 2008 12:34 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Kei Igawa

I think the Twins have shown that bidding wars are not their style, so it’s not surprising that they haven’t made moves with the Japanese League.

Kei Igawa was left unprotected in the Rule V draft this time around, I think he was looked at similarly to Kawakami, wasn’t he? Igawa is regarded as a bust, hard to say if pitching in New York was a significant distraction or if he just couldn’t cut it against AL east and MLB bats…

The link in the original post seems to indicate that scouts regard Kawakami’s stuff higher than most of the rest of the potential Japanese imports.

by ONeal on Dec 17, 2008 11:21 AM EST reply actions 0 recs