Kuzul

Since his call up from AAA Sacramento in mid-May, A’s outfielder/DH Jack Cust has seemingly reinvented himself as a hitter.

For those of you who don’t follow the A’s closely, Cust was a 4-A thumper who Billy Beane obtained from the Padres back in 2007 for a box of Cracker Jacks.

Cust immediately became a minor star for the A’s, hitting 26 HRs in fewer than 400 ABs and posting a .912 OPS as a 28-year-old rookie.

However, since his huge 2007, Cust declined the next two seasons, with his OPS dropping to .851 in 2008 and .773 last season.

Cust had a poor spring this year and found himself demoted to AAA Sacramento to start the 2010 season, an assignment which Cust accepted because it was the only way to ensure that he would continue to collect his $2.65 million salary.

The A’s love guys who get on base, and I suspect they made it clear to Cust when they sent him down that it was something he had to improve if he was going to remain in their organization.

Cust clearly took it to heart, because he looks like a completely different hitter since his return to Oakland.

Notwithstanding the fact that Cust has hit three HRs in his last four games, he’s currently hitting .287, by far the best of his career (his previous high in any season in which he had more than 100 ABs is .256 in 2007). He’s hit only five jacks so far this year.

Previously, Cust was a hitter who looked to crush the ball when he was at bat. He was extremely selective about the pitches he swung at, drawing a lot of walks, but also striking out at a tremendous rate. This year, he’s obviously trying to take something off his swing to deliver more base hits.

His 2010 HR rate per 100 ABs is the lowest of his career, and since he’s hitting fewer HRs (and also likely taking fewer pitches in the strike zone), Cust’s walks rate is also at a career low, although it’s not really much lower than last season when he wasn’t hitting. 

In the meantime, his on-base percentage stands at .388, the highest of his career since 2007, when he posted a .408 OBP.

It’s unusual for a player of Cust’s age (31) to change his approach so dramatically from one season to the next, so Cust’s new focus on hitting for average may be a fluke based on a small sample size (only 143 ABs so far this season). 

Cust is a good hitter, however, and I do believe that some of the change is a conscious effort on Cust’s part.

Another factor, however, is that Cust is also being used almost exclusively as a platoon player for the first time in the last four seasons. Only 15.4% of his at-bats this year have come against left-handed pitching, as opposed to 28.8% of his at-bats over the previous three seasons.

Needless to say, Cust has an extreme platoon advantage with a 141-point OPS difference (.866 to .725) when he bats against righties as opposed to lefties over his career. In other words, Cust is a great hitter against righties, but is only a replacement-level player against lefties.

Given Cust’s lack of speed or defensive skills, it seems clear that 80% or more of his major league plate appearances going forward should be against right-handed pitchers. 

Any less than that, and he isn’t likely to hit enough to help a team much.

Cust has a lot of value as a left-handed hitting platoon player, and his value in that regard would increase considerably if he could teach himself to play first base, along with the corner outfield positions.

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Yankees ace Andy Pettitte left today’s game in the third inning with a Grade One left groin strain, and it has already been announced that he is expected to miss four or five weeks.  Coupled with A.J. Burnett’s recent two-handed assault on a locker room door that left Burnett bloodied and his ego bruised, the Yankees will likely conclude they have to find another starter to make up for their recent failure to land top-prize Cliff Lee.

Will the Yankees decide that Roy Oswalt is their man?  I have heard very few rumors indicating the Yankees are interested in Oswalt, but there are certainly reasons to think he might be a good fit for the Bombers.

First, despite a crummy 6-11 record, Oswalt can still pitch.  His present 3.12 ERA is his lowest since 2006 and his rate of 8.5 Ks per nine innings is his highest since his rookie season of 2001.

Oswalt left today’s game after four innings with an ankle contusion after being struck by a sharply hit grounder off the bat of the Pirates’ Pedro Alvarez, but Oswalt isn’t expected to miss his next start.

Everyone has long been aware that the Astros have Oswalt on the auction block.  The big sticking point is that Oswalt still has approximately $25 million in future salary coming to him through the 2011, since Oswalt has a no-trade clause and the expectation is that Oswalt will require his $16 million 2011 option by picked up in exchange for waiving the no-trade clause.

That’s a lot of money, but, of course, the Yankees have more money than anyone for just these types of situations.  The Yankees also have loads of prospects to trade, and probably won’t have to give up the best of them if they taken on a relatively higher percentage of Oswalt’s remaining contract obligations.

The Yankees may be concerned how Oswalt would make the transition to the American League, as Javier Vasquez has underwhelmed in his second stint with the Yankees after a fine 2009 campaign in Atlanta.  However, I think Oswalt’s lack of experience in the AL is actually an advantage.

Unlike, Vasquez, who pitched four of the last six seasons in the AL before this one, Oswalt has never pitched for anyone but the Astros.  In other words, American League hitters have seen precious little of Oswalt.  A lack of familiarity usually favors the pitcher.

Here’s mlbtraderumors.com’s list of starting pitchers in play as the trade deadline approaches.  Dan Haren is probably the only pitcher on the list who ranks with Oswalt as far as the second half of this season is concerned.

The Yankees have several in-house options in a trio of 23-year-old minor leaguers, all of whom look pretty good.  They are Ivan Novoa, David Phelps, and Hector Noesi.

Novoa is 7-2 with a 3.21 ERA at AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, and he looked pretty good in a two-game cup of coffee he received with the Yankees in mid-May.

David Phelps has a 7-1 record with a 2.04 ERA after 14 starts at AA Trenton and three starts at AAA SWB.  Phelps’s ratios are terrific.

Noesi has a fantastic 1.74 ERA after ten starts at Trenton since being promoted from A+ Tampa, where he started the 2010 season.

However, it’s hard to see the Yankees throwing a completely untested rookie into a starting slot in the middle of a pennant race.

The Yankees will almost certainly trade for somebody now that they know they’ll be without Pettitte for at least a month.  The question is who the lucky pitcher will be.

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As Giants fans know, F. P. Santangelo is the Giants’ fifth radio/TV announcer.  He provides “color” when the team needs a fifth announcer, which doesn’t happen all that often since Jon Miller, Dave Fleming, Mike Krukow, and Duane Kuiper can usually handle both radio and TV on any given date.

The Giants have long been blessed with exceptionally good sportscasters (probably because the San Francisco Bay Area is an exceptionally great place to live when you are exceptionally well-paid).  Jon Miller was feted tonight for being awarded the Ford C. Frick Award this year, and he’s just an outstanding baseball play-by-play man.

Before Miller, the Giants had Hank Greenwald, who was a terrific announcer, and before that Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons.

Back to the subject at hand: tonight was the first time I have ever enjoyed listening to F. P. Santangelo’s color commentary.  Usually, he says nothing that isn’t painfully obvious.  Tonight, however, he made a great many germane points that actually added something to the broadcast.

F. P.’s performance tonight merits praise and acknowledgement, even if only here.  It isn’t particularly easy for a sportscaster to dramatically improve his performance, any more than it’s possible for, say, John McDonald to suddenly learn how to hit (for what it’s worth, McDonald currently has a .685 OPS—still terrible—the highest he has ever had in any of the nine seasons in which he has had 50 or more major league plate appearances).

To give you a better example of F. P.’s accomplishment tonight: every year, just as I hope the San Francisco Giants will finally win the World Series, I hope that this will be the year when I will enjoy listening to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver broadcast Saturday’s Game of the Week on Fox.

It never happens.  Every year, they are as unbearable as the year before.

Buck/McCarver say nothing that gives even one piece of new information to the fan (who has never played professional baseball) who has been following baseball seriously for more than five seasons. 

Their broadcasts are obvious and usually contain smarmy interviews with one of the game’s managers that really have nothing to do with the game at hand (for example, Rays manager Joe Madden’s thick rimmed eye-glasses).

I assume MLB likes the Buck/McCarver team because they are nothing but shills for the line MLB wants disseminated.  They treat their listeners like idiots, or at least people who haven’t watched closely more than 10 games in their lifetimes.

I find myself glued to the mute button when I watch the Game of the Week.  It’s bad enough that the game almost always features one of the New York or L.A. teams, without having to listen to Buck and McCarver butcher the broadcast.

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The guy who looks like the Giants’ top prospect is at Class A Augusta, 20-year-old right-handed starter Jorge Bucardo, who has slumped the last two weeks.  His ERA has risen to 2.38, although he allowed only one run in seven innings pitched on Wednesday.

The Giants should seriously consider reducing his work load going forward.  Bucardo is listed at 6’1″ and just 155 pounds, and has already pitched 106 innings this year, which is considerably more than the 51.1 to 81.2 IP he’s pitched the last three seasons in the low minors.  Bucardo had four consecutive mediocre outings right around the end of last season.

There’s no reason for the Giants to kill the golden goose when he’s only 20 and pitching in a low, full-season league.  If the Giants shut him down completely right now, he’d still be ready for a promotion to Class A+ San Jose in 2011.

On the other hand, the next best-looking young arm at Class A Augusta, Jose Casilla, looks like he’s ready for a promotion to San Jose right now.  After 30 appearances and 37.1 IP, he has an 0.96 ERA and fine ratios.

Today would be a great day to promote left-handed starter Eric Surkamp to AA Richmond.  It’s his 23rd birthday today (Happy Birthday, Eric!), and he’s ready to pitch at the AA level.

After 16 starts and 99 IP at Class A+ San Jose, Surkamp has a 3.18 ERA and 106 strikeouts while allowing 78 hits, six HRs, and 21 walks. I don’t think he has much left to prove at this level.

San Jose Giant Charlie Culberson is finally starting to look like the prospect the Giants were hoping for when they made him the 51st player selected in the 2007 Draft.  Aside from hitting .321, he’s hit three HRs in his last four games and now has 13 dingers on the season, to go with 26 doubles and four triples.

Culberson also has 16 stolen bases in 21 attempts.  He still isn’t patient enough (19 walks in 340 at-bats), but at age 21 this year, he’s really starting to look like a Grade-A prospect.

On a final note, coming off the All-Star break, 22-year-old first baseman Brandon Belt continues his torrid hitting at AA Richmond.  He went 3-for-4 yesterday with a triple and a HR.  After 10 games for the Flying Squirrels, he’s hitting .410 with five HRs (half his total at A+ San Jose) and a whopping 1.337 OPS.

It’s still too early to promote Belt to AAA Fresno, but if he’s still hitting this way after another ten games at Richmond, the Giants should seriously consider it.

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It was just announced the Giants signed lefty Dontrelle Willis to play for their AAA team, the Fresno Grizzlies.  While the adult in me thinks Dontrelle’s arm is shot, the kid in me loves this move.

I’ve always been a big fan of Dontrelle.  He’s from Oakland, just across the Bay from San Fran, and I just liked everything about him as a player.

Aside from being a great pitcher at a tender age, Dontrelle was also a terrific hitter.  He also really seemed to enjoy playing the game and showed a great deal of enthusiasm.  For a while there, he became one of MLB’s poster boys, with his infectious smile, his talent and performance, and the fact that he is African American at a time when MLB is trying to win back the black audience it once had.

The problem for Dontrelle is age-old.  He was too good, too young.  He was so good the Marlins couldn’t resist working him hard for five years between age 21 and 25 (he averaged 212 innings pitched those five seasons, peaking at 236.1 IP in his best season 2005 when he won 22 ball games).  Doc Gooden, Larry Dierker, Harry Krause: it’s an old, old story.

It’s been two and a half seasons since Dontrelle’s arm fell off, and at this point it seems doubtful he’ll ever recover the arm strength he had in 2005 or 2006.

Still, I’m glad the Giants are going to give him a chance, because he’s only 28 years old, and—who knows?—he might surprise me and a lot of other people by becoming a useful major league pitcher again one day.  It’s not like the Giants are so loaded with arms at AAA Fresno, they can’t afford to give Dontrelle a good, long look.

Here’s hoping the Giants get lucky.

In other news, the Marlins have given up on former Giants’ closer Armando Benitez and cut him loose.  Armando didn’t pitch terribly for the Marlins’ AAA team in New Orleans; in six appearances he had a 2.70 ERA, although his ratios weren’t as good.

Sorry, Armando: I hope the Giants don’t offer you a minor league deal like Dontrelle’s.  At age 37, probably weighing close to 300 lbs now, and not having pitched in the majors since 2008, he’s just not worth the Giants’ effort.

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It was reported today that the Mariners signed well-worn right-handed pitcher Jamey Wright and assigned him to the team. 

In order to clear roster space, the M’s optioned right-handed pitcher Chad Cordero to Triple-A Tacoma, but Cordero elected to become a free agent rather than accept the minor league assignment.

It’s not a move I understand at all. 

With Wright, 35, you know exactly what you are getting, and it isn’t very good.

Wright was released by the Indians after 18 appearances, in which he posted a 5.48 ERA with terrible ratios. 

Wright has a career ERA of 5.03 over 16 Major League seasons.

After being released by the Indians, he made 10 relief appearances for the Oakland Athletics’ Triple-A team in Sacramento, and he didn’t pitch well there either (9.00 ERA with 23 hits, nine walks, and 16 Ks in 14 IP). 

Wright opted out of his minor league contract to sign with the Mariners.

Meanwhile, 28-year-old Chad Cordero is working his way back from the major arm injury he had in 2008, when he had surgery to repair a torn labrum. 

Labrum tears are now generally harder to come back from than blown elbow tendons because shoulder injuries more often result in reduced velocity after surgery and rehabilitation.

Cordero hadn’t pitched well for the M’s this year (6.52 ERA in 9.2 IP with 10 hits and five walks allowed and six Ks), but that’s no worse than what Wright did in Cleveland this year.

Cordero also made 17 appearances at Triple-A Tacoma this year, where he posted an unimpressive 4.12 ERA but had fine peripheral numbers (19.2 IP, 19 hits, and four walks allowed, and 22 Ks).

That’s far better than Wright’s work at Triple-A Sacramento.

Unlike Wright, Cordero was once a great pitcher, and Cordero is still young enough to make a comeback. 

Why a going-nowhere club like the 2010 Mariners would essentially elect to trade in a 28-year-old pitcher with great upside for a 35-year-old pitcher who was never very good to begin with, I simply don’t understand.

Meanwhile, the San Francisco Giants should give serious consideration to making Cordero an offer—particularly if he is willing to pitch two weeks at Triple-A Fresno first so he can show he’s still got something. 

The Giants could use another right-handed middle reliever, given the command problems many of their middle relievers have had.

While it’s likely that at least one Major League team will offer Cordero a Major League job without a Triple-A audition first, the Giants can offer Cordero the chance to play on a contender by the end of July.

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Perhaps not surprisingly, Mariners’ management is taking heat for including Josh Lueke in the package of prospects they received along with Justin Smoak for Cliff Lee.

As I reported in this post two days ago , Lueke missed most of the 2009 season when he was charged with rape last Spring in Bakersfield, where he was then playing Class A+ ball.  After a lengthy jail stay, he pleaded no contest to a charge of false imprisonment with violence and was sentenced to 40 days in jail, which he had already served.

I had never heard of Josh Lueke when I first learned he was included in the Cliff Lee trade.  I looked at his minor league numbers and saw that he had missed almost all of the 2009 season, to what I initially assumed was an injury of some kind.  However, when I googled Lueke, the news stories out of Bakersfield about his arrest and plea deal came right up.

Apparently, the Mariners’ front office didn’t take the time to google Josh Lueke.  Again, I’m not surprised.  The player the M’s really wanted was Justin Smoak, and once they got him plus Blake Beavan, a former first round draft pick and a pitching prospect to replace Lee, the last two players thrown in (Lueke and Matt Lawson) were an after-thought.

Lueke is actually 25 this year, not 24 as I mistakenly stated in the original post.  However, he’s got great ratios (Ks/BBs, Ks/9 IP), and I’m sure that when the Rangers offered to throw Lueke into the deal (we now know why), the Mariners probably looked at his strike out numbers and decided he was a good bottom-of-the-deal, player-to-be-named-later candidate to round out the deal.

Ironically, the Mariners are a team which has taken a strong stand against violence towards women, so Lueke is the last player they would have wanted as a throw-in to sweeten the pot on the Cliff Lee trade.  Here’s a post from Mariners’ beat writer Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times, which describes the issues in detail.

What’s really damning is that Mariners’ brass is quoted as saying they were aware of the charges against Lueke and thought that last year’s resolution of the case meant that Lueke had been “cleared”.  Since a more accurate picture was only a google search away, it makes the M’s look really sloppy and careless.

My opinion is that Lueke should be allowed to continue pitching professionally for somebody (although I would certainly understand it if the M’s decided to release him given their past stance on domestic violence).  He’s served his sentence and has a right to resume his career as a professional baseball player for someone.

That being said, Lueke’s conviction is a matter of public record, and he’s going to have to live with the consequences of the really bad decisions he made on the night in question.  It’s fair game for the public to discuss and for teams to decide whether a player convicted of that particular crime is someone they want in their organizations. After all, professional sports are nothing but a form of entertainment which owe their livelihood entirely to the public’s good graces.

If nothing else, the episode is a good example of the fundamental premise that if you are a young athlete (or any young man, for that matter), don’t act like a douche-bag.

It’s a fact of life that many young women are turned on by professional athletes and will make themselves available to provide for a ballplayer’s needs, so long as they are freely given the choice to do so.

The news reports suggest that the young woman in Lueke’s case might well have been agreeable to a little harmless sleeze, if Lueke and his roommate hadn’t gotten her so drunk she passed out.

No matter what she may or may not have been willing to do if given a reasonably informed choice, every woman has an absolute right to be given the opportunity to make that choice.

Lueke apparently didn’t give this young woman any such opportunity, and he has rightfully had hell to pay as a result. At age 24, he was certainly old enough to know better, no matter how much he had to drink that night.

I wonder if teams give their young players a stock speech about the fact that women don’t exist solely to serve a ballplayer’s needs, and that while many women will be only to happy to indulge a ballplayer’s fancy, some women will not and that such refusals must be respected.

In basketball and football, players generally go straight from college to the major leagues, where other players, the players’ association and players’ individual agents can give them lectures about the facts of life and proper conduct.  In baseball, however, minor leaguers start very young and are often largely on their own to make decisions about how they conduct themselves off the field.

Even then, baseball has no monopoly on loutish conduct.  Ben Rothlisberger’s recent episode and Kobe Bryant’s rape charge of a few years back are both examples.

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It’s now official: Left-handed ace Cliff Lee, along with injured right-handed reliever Mark Lowe and $2.5 million to pay much of Lee’s remaining 2010 salary, are headed to the Rangers, while the Mariners will receive first baseman Justin Smoak and three minor league prospects (Blake Beavan, Josh Lueke and Matt Lawson) in return.

On balance, I think it was the right move for the Rangers at the right time. The Rangers haven’t made the play-offs since 1999, but 85 games into the 2010 season they find themselves 5.5 games ahead of the second place Angels, and 9.5 games ahead of the third place A’s. The AL West is a weak division, but making the play-offs is making the play-offs, and the Rangers have certainly improved their chances of doing so.

This move is going to give the team a big boast, both on the field and also in terms of the pending sale. Cliff Lee is originally from Arkansas, so you’d have to figure he’s excited about playing in Arlington, where it’s only about a five or six hour drive for his family and friends in Benton to see him pitch in person.

With a 5.5 game lead already, the Rangers didn’t necessarily have to make this move to win the division, but they’re a young team, and the Angels are probably a better team than they’ve shown in the first half.  When you haven’t made the post-season in a more than a decade, you have to pull out all of the stops and give yourself the best chance to do it.

Did the Mariners get as much as they could for Lee?  I’m not convinced they did.

Clearly, they wanted Justin Smoak, so much so that they were willing to accept less than A-grade prospects (except maybe 21 year old RHP Blake Beavan) as far as the other players going to the M’s are concerned.

Smoak is certainly a legitimate A-grade prospect, but I have this nagging feeling that the idea of receiving Justin Smoak in this deal is better than the reality of receiving Smoak.  Everyone knows who Smoak is and that he’s a highly regarded prospect.  He was the 11th player selected in the 2008 Draft, and he’s already playing regularly in the major leagues.

The thing is, Smoak really hasn’t played well above AA ball. After 275 major league plate appearances, he’s hitting all of .209 with a .670 OPS, and that’s in one of MLB’s best hitters’ parks.  Last year, after hitting .328 with a .930 OPS in 227 AA plate appearances, he hit only .244 with a .723 OPS in 237 AAA plate appearances in the hit-happy Pacific Coast League.

Sure, Smoak hasn’t been in pro baseball very long, and it could just be growing pains.  However, at age 23, it’s not too early to expect him to prove that he’s a major league hitter really and for true.

As for the other players the M’s received, 21 year old RHP Blake Beavan is clearly the best.  He was the 17th player selected overall in the 2007 Draft.  He currently has a fine 10-5 record with a 2.78 ERA at AA Frisco in the Texas League and a line of 110 IP, 100 hits, six HRs and 12 walks allowed and 68 Ks.  He was recently promoted to AAA by the Rangers but hasn’t made a start there yet.

The biggest concern about Beavan is that his strikeout rates aren’t impressive for a young pitcher.  He has struck out 5.15 hitters per nine innings in his minor league career to date, and that’s without having pitched an inning at the AAA level.  However, his control is outstanding, with a career minor K/BB ratio of 3.7/1.

Beavan already has the command to be a major league pitcher.  Whether he has the stuff to be a major league starter remains to be seen.

Josh Lueke is a 24 year old right-handed reliever who is having a fine year roughly split between A+ and AA ball.  His combined stats for the year are a 2.11 ERA, 32 appearances, 38.1 IP, 30 hits, two HRs and ten walks allowed and 62 Ks.

However, Lueke missed almost the entire 2009 season after being arrested in Bakersfield on charges that he raped an unconscious woman.  He ultimately accepted a plea deal , pleading no contest to a charge of false imprisonment with violence.  Here are the details of the original allegations from a reputable news source.  They aren’t pretty.

Matt Lawson is a 24 year old second baseman, currently having a strong season with AA Frisco.  He’s hitting .277 with an excellent .371 on-base percentage and an .809 OPS.  However, he’s getting old be a prospect at this level, and he’s having his best minor league season this year, which suggests that he may be playing above his true level of ability.

The right-handed reliever the Rangers received, Mark Lowe, went on the disabled list in early May with lower back disk inflammation that required surgery and will keep him out of action for the rest of 2010.  He had a fine year in 2009 for the M’s (3.26 ERA in 75 relief appearances with good ratios), but back injuries requiring surgery tend to be recurring.

Perhaps Lowe will be able to help the Rangers in future seasons, but at the moment he looks a bit like a throw-in to provide cover for the Rangers agreeing to give up a fourth prospect in return for Lee.

In the short term, this deal doesn’t weaken the Rangers at all.  24 year old Chris Davis, who has a .961 OPS at AAA Oklahoma City, will be called up to replace Smoak on the Rangers’ roster, and whoever the Rangers play at first this year will hit as well as Smoak did in the first half.

In the long-term, the Rangers may regret giving up Smoak one day, but they are trading from a position of depth, and they didn’t have to give up more of their best young pitchers, including any of Tommy Hunter, Tanner Scheppers, Michael Kirkland or Neftali Perez.

I’m surprised how quickly the deal came together considering how long the Mariners had until the trade deadline to move Lee.  A couple of days ago, the Twins appeared to be the favorite to nab Lee.

This morning the Yankees jumped in front with a reported offer of 20 year old catcher Jesus Montero, 23 year old 2Bman David Adams and possibly 22 year old RHP Zach McAllister.  That deal didn’t go through because the Mariners reportedly had concerns about Adams’ health (he badly sprained his ankle and hasn’t played since May 22nd).

The M’s may have done the Yankees a huge favor in not accepting a package containing Jesus Montero.  Barring injury, Montero looks like a sure bet to be in the majors for good before the end of the 2011 season.  There aren’t many 20 year old catchers you can say that about.

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Yu Darvish is God.

That’s a wild exaggeration, but now that Stephen Strasburg is pitching for the Nationals, Darvish is the best pitcher in the world not pitching in the major leagues.  Here’s a post I wrote in May of 2009 about Darvish for background.

After three consecutive full seasons with ERAs of 1.82, 1.88, and 1.73, through half a season (15 starts) in 2010, Darvish has a an ERA of 1.46.  Despite heavy work loads at a tender age, Darvish has the highest strikeouts per innings pitched rate of his career so far this season to go along with a 3.5-to-1 Ks-to-BBs rate.

The give you an idea of just how good Darvish has been so far in 2010, the next best pitcher in Japan’s Pacific League—Hisashi Iwakuma of the Rakuten Golden Eagles—has an ERA of 2.53, more than a run higher than Darvish.  And Iwakuma is a great pitcher in his own right.  At age 29, Iwakuma would likely be a star pitching in the U.S. right now, and had seasons in NPB (2004 and 2008) where he went 15-2 and 21-4.

Unfortunately, we in the States are far more likely to see Iwakuma than Darvish pitch in the U.S. in the near future.  Iwakuma is pitching in his 10th season in NPB.  He’s a free agent at the end of this season and has expressed some willingness to pitch in the U.S.  He’ll definitely draw serious interest given his career and 2010 records.

However, Iwakuma is no Yu Darvish.  Darvish is young (turns 24 on August 16), throws high 90s, and is incredibly polished.  He’s exactly what major league teams are looking for, and he’d likely top the money paid out by the Red Sox for Daisuke Matsuzaka in fees to Darvish’s team, the Nippon Ham Fighters, and in salary to Darvish, if he were made available to U.S. teams.

Nippon Ham is not one of Japan’s powerhouse teams, so you’d certainly think they’ve given consideration to posting Darvish for American teams to bid on.  However, Darvish has yet to express any interest in pitching in the U.S.

While Japanese players can make a lot more money in salary pitching in the U.S., their endorsement opportunities are much greater in Japan, and they are revered at home, where baseball is far and away the most popular team sport, in a way that American baseball players haven’t been since at least the 1960s.  That can be hard to leave behind.

On the other hand, the lure of receiving top dollar and playing on the world’s biggest baseball stage against the world’s best competition is also great for NPB’s top players. 

Ichiro, Hideki Matsui, and Matsuzaka have made a lot more money playing in the U.S. than they would have at home, and that’s taking into account the fact that Godzilla was offered a nine or 10 year $61 million deal, by far the most ever offered by a Japanese team, to stay with the Yomiuri Giants the year before he came to the U.S.

The desire to prove you can play with the very best and be compensated accordingly is generally very high when talking about these kinds of players.

My guess is that at some point in the not-so-distant future, Darvish is going to decide he’s had enough of pushing around NPB’s hitters and will want to prove himself against the best the World has to offer.  Except for the top Cuban players who aren’t willing to defect, those players are all in MLB.

I still have some doubts about Darvish’s long-term prospects because he has thrown so many professional innings before age 25 (951.1 IP in NPB as I write this).  However, he’s shown no major ill effects of the work load so far, so you never know.  He might be one of those pitchers who can handle a heavy work load (although I kind of doubt it).

Thanks to this post from NPB Tracker, you can watch all of Darvish’s July 3, 2010 start against the Golden Eagles.  Patrick even lists the exact time when you can see Darvish throw a 155 km/hr (96 mph) fastball out of the stretch to strike out some overmatched NPB hitter. 

The pitch isn’t close to the strike zone, but the beauty of the high hard one is that the harder you throw it, the further out of the strike zone they’ll chase it.

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It was reported yesterday that the Twins made a concrete offer of 22-year-old catcher Wilson Ramos and 20-year-old outfielder Aaron Hicks for the Mariners’ Cliff Lee. If true, it’s a good starting place for negotiations. The Twins will likely have to offer at least one more prospect to get Lee.

Wilson Ramos came into the 2010 season as the Twins top prospect after a strong half-season at AA New Britain in 2009 and also the Twins’ top trade chip. His future as the Twins’ backstop is blocked by current catcher Joe Mauer, who signed a major contract before the start of the season.

Ramos did well when the Twins called him up from May 2nd through 12th this year while Mauer was injured. He hit .296 in seven games (8 for 27) and hit three doubles. However, seven of those eight hits came in his first two games, after which he hit poorly.

Even worse, Ramos hasn’t hit this year at AAA Rochester.  He’s currently hitting .208 with an awful .244 on-base percentage and .563 OPS. Right handed pitchers have given him a whole lot of trouble at the AAA level.

Ramos turns 23 on August 10, so he’s still young enough to be a future star if he can prove his terrible first half of 2010 was an aberration. However, he’s hurt his top prospect status considerably from where he stood in Spring Training.

Aaron Hicks was the Twins first-round pick in the 2008 Draft (14th overall). He’s never played higher than the Class A Midwest League so far in his professional career, and after 842 professional plate appearances he has a career .271 batting average and a .793 OPS, which isn’t particularly impressive. However, his career .374 on-base percentage is much more so.

You have to figure that someone else is going to offer the Mariners two prospects on a par with where Ramos and Hicks are right now. Thus, it’s probably going to come down to who can offer the best third prospect for the Mariners to pull the trigger. That, or the Mariners get the one top prospect (and couple of grade B prospects) they want above all others.

One example of such a player might be 20-year-old Yankees catcher Jesus Montero. Aside from being two years younger than Ramos, he presently has a .732 OPS at AAA Scranton-Wilkes Barre and had an OPS more than 100 points higher than Ramos in similar playing time in the AA Eastern League last season.

If the Yankees are willing to make Montero the centerpiece of a three-prospect package, you’d have to think they’d win the Cliff Lee Sweepstakes. I think it would be a mistake for the Yankees to give up Montero, however.

With Jorge Posada now 38 (he turns 39 on August 17th), it wouldn’t be a wise move to trade away a great candidate to be the next in the long line of long-term Yankees’ catchers.

There’s also reports of the Reds trying to tempt the Mariners with first baseman Yonder Alonso, who is blocked by Joey Votto in Cincinnati. I can’t see the Mariners accepting a package centered around Alonso, though.

Alonso is already 23 years old and has a feeble .678 OPS after half a season at AAA Louisville. His career minor league OPS after 716 plate appearances is only .778, which doesn’t suggest that he’s going to be a great slugging 1Bman at the major league level any time soon.

The Mariners are reported to have a lot of interest in the Brewers’ 20-year-old prospect Brett Lawrie. Lawrie is playing second and has a robust .837 OPS at AA Huntsville as I write this. However, with the Brewers currently 10.5 games behind the first-place Reds and 8.5 games back of the second-place Cardinals, I can’t see the Brewers trading prospects for veterans this year.

B.J. Upton from Tampa Bay is another name that’s been thrown around. I can’t see the Mariners making a deal around him when they have Franklin Gutierrez in center field already.

The road looks open for the Twins. They’ll have to sweeten the pot with a third prospect to close the deal, though.

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