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Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Hey they’re big in Japan
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We probably should have taken a poll to gauge Frank Wren’s approval rating just after last week’s news that John Smoltz felt a bit miffed over the Braves’ offer to him and had decided to sign with the Boston Red Sox.
Because I’m guessing Wren’s rating would have been rather low that day. And I’ve got to think it’s risen considerably in recent days with the acquisition of free-agent pitchers Kenshin Kawakami and Derek Lowe.
Oh, sure, there are plenty of folks who will criticize one or both signings, who’ll say Kawakami is an unknown commodity (which he basically is) who got too much money, and/or that the Braves should never have given a $60 million, four-year contract to a 35-year-old pitcher, despite the fact that Lowe has been a far more durable and reliable pitcher than A.J. Burnett, for whom the Braves offered $80 million before he signed with the Yankees for $82 million.
But seriously, there were going to be plenty of detractors regardless of what Wren did — if he did nothing and aimed for 2010; or if he “blew up the team” (whatever the hell that means) and aimed for the long-term future; if he pinched pennies and added a cheaper (and less-accomplished) pitcher such as Jon Garland instead of Lowe … in short, some were sure to bitch if he did anything short of trade two middling minor-leaguers for Jake Peavy.
And if he traded two minor leaguers, I can assure you there would have still been a few folks here complaining that he was mortgaging the future for a pitcher whose stats were a product of Petco Park and whose elbow would likely implode and send tissue and muscle flying across rows of fans in his first start for the Braves (yikes, I’m really tired, ain’t I?).
Hey, it’s the nature of the GM position, particularly when opinions are swayed by a largely unpopular move — like, say, letting a fan-favorite Braves icon like Smoltz go over what amounted to a (guaranteed) $3 million difference in offers — and a few other personnel pursuits that didn’t work out this winter, including the Burnett and Peavy matters, plus the Rafael Furcal debacle and the Mike Hampton exit.
Anyway, we’re not here to rehash all that (unless you all want to), but rather to say that this week has been a rollercoaster for Wren and the Braves, and for their fans, many of whom acknowledge going from the depths of despair after Smoltz left to feeling much better about the Braves’ chances with the additions of one of Japan’s top pitchers and the best available free agent on the market.
Braves still have work to do, including getting another hitter and perhaps re-signing Will Ohman for a bullpen that’s got to rely an awful lot on three surgically repaired arms in Soriano, Moylan and Gonzalez in key roles.
But these were big steps, Lowe and Kawakami, if you ask me.
Remember, people, there were observers and evaluators who had Lowe as the second- or third-best free agent starter available entering this offseason, some rating him behind only C.C. Sabathia. Burnett is a more dominant pitcher, when he’s healthy. But he’s healthy far less frequently than Lowe, who is 4-1/2 years older but has averaged 15 wins and 208 innings in seven seasons as a starter since 2002.
Lowe is 106-75 with a 3.79 ERA in 233 starts since 2002, while Burnett is 69-55 with a 3.71 ERA and 164 starts in that period. (Just for comparison’s sake, Peavy is 86-62 in 199 starts since 2002, his rookie season, and Ben Sheets is 75-73 with a 3.60 ERA in 196 starts since ‘02, which was his second season in the majors.)
Lowe is tied with Johan Santana for third-most wins in the majors since 2002 , behind Roys Oswalt (115) and Halladay (113).
He’s good, folks. And durable. While my colleague Jeff Schultz wonders if we might be calling Lowe the next Mike Hampton in a couple of years, I have to ask, where’s the comparison? Hampton already had a string of injuries and a couple of disappointing seasons in Colorado when the Rockies agreed to eat a big chunk of his salary over the remaining six years of his contract so he’d go away.
Contrast that to Lowe, who was 14-11 with a 3.24 ERA in 211 innings last season, and in his final 10 starts he was 6-1 with a 1.27 ERA. And that’s with a Los Dodgers team that had shoddy infield defense and inconsistent run support.
OK, so the Braves are hardly looking like a high-scoring machine at this point. But they do have one of the most highly regarded infield defenses in the NL, with Gold Glove-caliber 1B Casey Kotchman, dynamic shortstop Yunel Escobar, a still-strong defensive 3B in batting champion Chipper Jones, and a serviceable defensive 2B in Kelly Johnson, who’s not regarded by Lowe and his agent, Scott Boras, as anywhere near the defense liability some on this blog claim he is.
In fact, Boras said he considered the Braves’ overall situation, including that infield defense, and told Lowe last month that this was a team he should seriously consider if they made a good offer for him, even though Lowe and his new wife were said to prefer one of the big Northeastern cities initially (she’s a California native and was a TV news personality out there).
Lowe’s visit last week, a five-hour epic that included long talks with Bobby Cox, Roger McDowell, Wren and other Braves officials, swayed him to Boras’ way of thinking. Lowe really liked what he saw and heard, including the rundown on the Braves’ pitching talent in the minor league systen, which Boras had also told him about beforehand.
Boras, who also represents Jair Jurrjens, remarked that pitching prospect Tommy Hanson (not a Boras client) is widely regarded as one of the best three prospects in all of baseball, and the agent was quite familiar with the Braves’ bevy of other pitching prospects and with their outfield prospects including Jordan Schafer, Jason Heyward and Boras client Gorkys Hernandez.
The highest-profile agent in the business spoke about the Braves in more favorable tones than a lot of their frustrated fans have lately.
Sure, some will say he steered Lowe here just because the Braves were desperate and would be willing to give him the biggest contract. But I’m telling you, in conversations with Boras in recent weeks, I really got the impression he believes the Braves are poised for a resurgence over the next several years in large part because of the young players on their current major league roster and the load of prospects bubbling just below the surface, ready to start trickling onto the big-league roster over the next several years.
Think about the Braves’ potential rotation in 2010: Lowe, Jair Jurrjens, Javier Vazquez, Kawakami, and Hanson. If the Braves and Tim Hudson agree to pick up his option for 2010, well, then the Braves, provided everyone else stays healthy, could have a nice trade chip with, say, Vazquez.
And remember, the Braves might have overpaid for Lowe, but they avoided giving him a no-trade clause.
Kawakami’s arrival: I knew covering Kawakami would be a different experience, but it wasn’t until dozens of camera shutters were going off in unison for a minute or so at Wednesday’s press conference that I realized just how different it’s going to be.
Like my man in Jaws said, we’re going to need a bigger boat.
Or rather, a bigger pressbox. The one at Dark Star is going to be jammed this spring, and I’d imagine a spare radio booth or two will have to serve as overflow seating for the many Japanese reporters who’ll be covering Kawakami.
A Japanese reporter told me perhaps 20 reporters would cover him this spring, and maybe 30 people in all, including cameramen and photogs. That number will likely decrease during the season, as the economy in Japan is suffering, too, and their newspapers are cutting back on travel much like ours in the States.
Another moment when I realized how different Kawakami would be: When he said through a translator that he wanted to put “his soul” into all his pitches, and to illustrate he held up a small painting he’d done of — if I understood this correctly — the Japanese character or figure that represents “soul.”
Hey, it looked like a Rohrschach test to me, but Kawakami was clearly proud of it, and hey, it was pretty cool looking.
The dude seems like a good guy, shy and respectful, and genuinely happy to be here. He and his agent said that so many people had come up and introduced themselves and wished him luck these past couple of days, that he was now even more certain of his decision to sign with the Braves.
That Southern hospitality, agent Dan Evans said, was already evident to the 33-year-old pitcher.
I wrote in my story that he ate at the Varsity — “hot dogs, cheeseburgers and Coca-Colas,” he said through a translator — and at Morton’s downtown, and at the steakhouse he was introduced to former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young.
Evans said that Kawakami recognized his name from a sign on Andrew Young Boulevard near their downtown hotel.
Imagine, for a moment, what this must be like for a guy who was a star in Japan, who’d spent all 11 seasons over there with the same Chunichi Dragons team. Gotta admire him for having the stones to come to the U.S. and to a team that’s never had a Japanese player, when he could’ve just gone to one of those that already had or have a Japanese player and already ironed out the potential difficulties in the transition period for a player from that country.
Team meeting Wednesday: Another good move by Wren was to privately contact Braves players who are in Atlanta and invite them to a meeting/discussion at Turner Field on Wednesday, where they can say what’s on their minds and Wren can personally tell them about what the team is doing and how they’re trying to put together a roster that can contend for a playoff berth.
Been a lot of comments, including very public criticism by Chipper Jones, of the team’s moves before this week, including the perceived lack of a concerted effort to retain Smoltz when the Red Sox went after him harder than the Braves did, or at least that’s how it appeared to some Braves.
Anyway, players seemed pleased that Wren reached out to invite them down to talk it out. And that was before the news of the Lowe signing Wednesday morning, which was greeted with universal approval by Braves we talked to today.
Got some especially good quotes from a couple of Braves, including Chipper, who talked to Carroll Rogers, and Kelly Johnson, who I talked with on the phone for a while before the Kawakami news conference.
I’ll just give you their quotes in full, since I’m fading fast and need some food after this 12-hour workday of constant writing, rewriting, and press-conferencing:
Chippper Jones quotes:
On how he felt about the Braves signing Derek Lowe (before Chipper had heard enough to believe it entirely): “I’d feel better than I did 48 hours ago. I still think that can be a really good rotation with John Smoltz in it, but no sense crying over spilled milk. What we got is what we got. We’ve just got to go out there and play better. We were without Smoltzy for a long time last year, so we’re used to that at least. We’ve just got to go out and play better.”
“But I do like — if this is true — I do like having two guys that you can pretty much count on are going to go out there and throw 200 innings [Lowe and Vazquez] because that was a big part of our problem last year. We had too many instances where a starter went three or four innings and the bullpen got overtaxed and overused and ultimately overexposed.”
On Kawakami’s adjustment here: “His whole career he’s thrown in a six-man rotation, I don’t know how that’s going to translate over here because he’s used to a routine. That’s all he’s done his whole career, and now his routine is going to have to change. You always wonder how his arm and his body will adjust to that. But the good thing is if he can’t go, we have other options. We have a [Jorge] Campillo, a Jo-Jo [Reyes], a Charlie Morton, a Hanson. These last couple signings have, if anything, given us depth in the starting rotation.”
(Blogmeister note: Kawakami has actually pitched in a five-man rotation at times in Japan, such as in his 215-inning season in 2006. His innings were down significantly this season because he missed nearly a month for the Olympics and three weeks for a back strain.)
On his impressions of Japanese players who’ve joined the majors over the last decade and if he’s intrigued to have a Japanese player join the Braves: “I don’t think there’s any doubt they can play. I’ve faced Japanese pitchers for years starting with Nomo and Irabu, and Matsuzaka is really good, some of the closers Saito and Sasaki from Seattle Those guys have come over here and done real well, so there’s no doubt that the Japanese players can come over here and contribute well. [Kawakami] won the equivalent of the Cy Young over there. He knows what he’s doing. I would love to see a middle of the rotation that’s going to go out and give us seven innings every time out and keep us in the game. If he does that, he’s going to be very popular here.”
His thoughts on Lowe: “200 innings is the magic number for starters; he’s going to give you that. He’s going to keep you in ball games, he’s going to keep the ball on the ground. He’s a guy who pitches to contact, he relies on contact. He’s not a power strikeout guy, so we’re going to have to play good defense behind him, put the best possible eight guys out there behind him and play good defense. I don’t foresee that being a problem. Our infield is solid.
“However our outfield shapes up looks to be solid, so at least defensively, we’re going to have his back. That’s what you want — top of your rotation, a guy that you know will go out there every fifth day, is going to give you six, seven, eight innings, work fast, keep the ball on the ground, keep you in the game and give you a chance to win. Derek does that.”
So he’s a bonafide ace in your mind? “Yeah, definitely. There’s no doubt. You put him in this staff, he’s a definite No. 1. But I think with his age and his experience, that’s the spot you want him. You want him leading your staff because he’s been around the longest and he’s probably been the most proven.”
Kelly Johnson quotes:
Thoughts on the two signings, on the heels of Smoltz decision: “Big week, huh?
“He [Lowe] seems to be more of a fit in our locker room [than some other unnamed pitchers the Braves could have acquired], just from appearances. I’m a fan of [these two signings]. I think a lot of Lowe, I don’t know one hitter who —- well, there might be some left-handed hitters that can say whatever about him, but he’s a tough pitcher to face because of that sinkerball. I thought we should go after him from the beginning. Good fit for us.
“Kawakami is like Vazquez, doesn’t throw 98 but he’s one of those guys who keeps you off-balance. One of the keys for us is just the durability. I like the look when you’ve got those four guys in the first four spots, and the fifth spot with guys like Jo-Jo, Morton, Hanson, Bennett, Carlyle, Campillo….”
Any concern about possibly having all righty starters? “In my opinion, no, because I feel like a lot of the best left-handed hitters, the Howards and Utleys, seem to do just as well against lefties, I’ve seen Utltey hit a home run against Pedro Feliciano, one of the toughest lefties out there, and I’ve seen Howard do that. I think it’s a little different now. I think the bigger part of lety-right matchups is the bullpen.”
“Durability and giving you seven strong innings is the important thing [for starters].”
On Lowe being a groundball pitcher and the Braves having a solid defensive infield: “I’m lobbying that they keep the grass where it is right now, nice and long and thick.”
On the team in general: “We’ve got a lot of depth everywhere. If you get Frenchy back to where he was, or you get Matt Diaz back to where he was, then you get a surprise out of someone like a Brandon Jones, then all of a sudden you’re the Tampa Bay Rays. If Josh Anderson gets on base all the time, and all he’s stealing 70 bases … hey, this team suddenly is pretty good.”
OK, that’s it for me: I’m wiped out. Been a long freakin’ day, and I’m gonna be sitting in a dentist chair at 7:30 a.m., nine hours from now, being fitted for a crown and having some old fillings replaced.
”BIG IN JAPAN” by Tom Waits
I got the style but not the grace
I got the clothes but not the face
I got the bread but not the butter
I got the winda but not the shutter
But I’m big in Japan I’m big in Japan But heh I’m big in Japan
I got the house but not the deed
I got the horn but not the reed
I got the cards but not the luck
I got the wheel but not the truck
But heh I’m big in Japan I’m big in Japan I’m big in Japan
I got the moon I got the cheese
I got the whole damn nation on its knees
I got the rooster I got the crow
I got the ebb I got the flow
But heh I’m big in Japan I’m big in Japan I’m big in Japan
Heh ho they love the way I do it
Heh ho there’s really nothing to it
I got the moon I got the cheese
I got the whole damn nation on their knees
I got the rooster I got the crow
I got the ebb I got the flow
I got the sizzle but not the steak
I got the boat but not the lake
I got the sheets but not the bed
I got the jam but not the bread
But heh I’m big in Japan I’m big in Japan I’m big in Japan
I’m big in Japan I’m big in Japan
