Aki to Battle Recent History

by R.J. Anderson on Jan 20, 2008 1:25 PM EST

Aki has high dreams this year of playing baseball in October, hitting .300 (or you know, a .400 OBP would be fine Aki), and scoring 100 runs. There seems to be a common thought that players will improve in their second year, after looking over some of the improvements from recent Japanese position players I'm not enthused to say the least:

Player Year One OPS / Year Two OPS H. Matsui .788/.912 I. Suzuki .838/.813 T. Iguchi .780/.774 S. Taguchi .871/.829 K. Matsui .727/.652 T. Shinjo .725/.664 A. Iwamura .770/???

Shinjo and Taguchi weren't exactly good players, and Kaz Matsui went through a ton of struggles in New York, but outside of Hideki Matsui no other hitter seemed to adopt and improve in their second year in America. Aki seemed to take a ton of strikes looking last year - apparently about 30% of his strikes were looking, compare that to 24% from Carlos Pena, 18% from Crawford, and 37% from the Greek God of Walks Youkilis. He just needs to start whining like Youkilis to get the borderline calls, but for some reason I don't see Aki doing that.

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Re: Aki to Battle Recent History

Not even taking into account the stats of these six players, I don't see much basis for the assumption that the second year should be better than the first.

First, these guys are all at least 28-yrs-old when they come over, already at or beyond (Taguchi) the peak of their careers, so there shouldn't be any age-related jump in production.

Second, these guys were all to some degree successful in Japan, so they are probably more or less set in their pattern of play by now. Sure, there will be minor situational adjustments, but for a hitter I doubt it is anything fundamental enough to significantly impact their stats from one year to the next.

I don't put much stock in off-field cultural or family adjustment. Once you're in the box, I just don't see how adjusting to a different society matters much.

Third, adjustments are a two-way street. Not only does the hitter make adjustments, but so do your opponents. No advantage gained.

After a full spring training and 162 games, given the above circumstances, what you see is what you get. I fully expect more of the same from Iwamura next year.. and that works just fine for me. If he stays fully healthy, perhaps he sees some slight statistical improvment.

by RATW on Jan 20, 2008 4:40 PM EST reply actions