Dodgers - Reportedly Signed Kuroda
Los Angeles Dodgers - Reportedly signed P
Hiroki Kuroda to a contract of some sort.
This might be a bit premature, but we (or me) here at the Transaction Oracle like to push the envelope to the max. And to the extreme. And to the limit. Your humble servant is badass enough to drink 2 Mountain Dews in a row. That is, if Mountain Dew wasn't a horrific strontium-90 infused concoction that leaves a film on your throat similar to the fictional green ooze that turned four ordinary turtles into four Cowabunguous ninjas.
No detailed dollar figures or years have been released/leaked, but if I had to guess, it probably compensates Kuroda with a large amount of American dollars to be paid off over a specific period of time, with whole years being the unit of time used. With Kuroda and Fukodome, it'll be interesting who gets an anglicized name first, a la "Tad" Iguchi or Dice-K. Casey Fukodome? Howie Kuroda?
Forced to take a stab at specifics, it's probably in the neighborhood of the deal Aaron Cook just signed for dollars - 3 or 4 years, somewhere in the low 8 figures each year. Kuroda's clearly better than Igawa, but certainly not as good as Matsuzaka, so I guess the pricing makes sense, especially in a terrible free agent market for pitching. When Carlos Silva and Kyle Lohse are the most valuable pitching free agents, you can't complain when a team does this. And maybe even the Dodgers won't screw over Chad Billingsley for the second straight spring!
I did go ahead and change the games started a bit - Japanese pitcher usage is quite different, so it would look a little weird (but doesn't change anything on the projection!)
2008 ZiPS Projection - Hiroki Kuroda
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W L G GS IP H ER HR BB SO ERA ERA+
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Projection 12 9 26 26 180 186 79 21 37 114 3.92 115
2009? 11 8 25 25 176 182 79 20 40 112 4.04 112
2010? 10 9 25 25 172 184 82 20 44 102 4.29 105
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Opt. (15%) 15 7 28 28 203 194 75 20 36 141 3.33 136
Pes. (15%) 7 10 22 22 144 163 79 21 40 79 4.94 92
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Top Comps: Bryn Smith, Brad Radke
Dan Szymborski
Posted: December 12, 2007 at 10:52 AM |
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Fukudome will have many Anglicized nicknames I suspect but I wouldn't make "Casey" the favorite.
Billingsley was the best Dodger starter in the second half - that should give him some security anyway.
It looks like the Dodgers will have Billingsley, Penny, Lowe, Kuroda, Schmidt (if healthy and recovered) and Loaiza competing for the six spots, with several kids waiting in the wings. Hopefully enough depth.
Billingsley also was 7-2, 3.16 in the 2nd half of 2006, but cruising for half a season in real games obviously isn't anywhere near as indicative as a couple of bad exhibition games.
In 2007 is k/bb ratio in the second half was 83/42 in 92.1 innings.
I agree that he should have been given the job out of spring training - but he looked far better in 2007 than he had in 2006.
The big difference seems to be HR's - Japanese pitchers generally get a tremendous HR prevention boost moving from NPB to MLB due to the larger ballparks outweighing having to face better HR hitters....nevertheless, I think my projection may be too optimistic...
200 IP 4.77 ERA 225 H, 49 W, 135 K's 1.37 WHIP 33 HR
91.4m to LF and RF corners, 115.8m to the "deepest" part of Cf. High Wall though at 2.55m
Kuroda: 181 IP, 174H, 49bb 137k 21hr 3.78 ERA
Matsuzaka had a 3.59 ERA through mid-August... Looking at his full-season averages doesn't do him justice.
I wouldn't be shocked of Kuroda suffers in the final month or two as well.
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