Kodai Senga, Masataka Yoshida will draw plenty of MLB interest

He will turn 30 in January, is a three-time All-Star and went 11-6 with a 1.94 ERA this year with 156 strikeouts in 144 innings. He is a Yu Darvish disciple, often training with him in the offseason in the U.S. To better prep for MLB, Senga began working with a Driveline Baseball (think pitch maximization and design) representative in Japan.

Multiple MLB officials painted the upside of a high-octane fastball that can reach triple digits and which Senga can maintain efficiently in the mid-90s for an entire start with one of the world’s best forkball/splits.

On the downside, Senga will have to improve his breaking ball in MLB, which has become slider crazy. There is worry about a few nagging elbow injuries. And there are enough fastball command issues that some MLB execs wondered if he will become a closer. Beyond that, there are concerns about the transition from pitching every sixth day to every fifth day, leaving behind the tacky Japanese baseball (though MLB is experimenting with a tacky ball) and facing more stacked and powerful lineups. The excitement around Senga is not the same as for, say, Darvish or Irabu or Masahiro Tanaka.
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The Yankees, among others, are looking for lefty hitters with strong bat-to-ball skills and Rea was so enthusiastic about Yoshida that he actually texted a series of clips of Yoshida hitting, including a homer off Rea.

“He’s an incredible hitter,” Rea said. “Yoshida impresses every game, every at-bat. He’s unique. He has great awareness of the strike zone. He always has good at-bats. He can hit for power and average. He’s a much better hitter than [Seiya] Suzuki [who had a .770 OPS and 14 homers in 446 plate appearances as a 2002 rookie with the Cubs]. … There’s no reason he couldn’t be one of the best hitters in [MLB].”