Billy Beane Signs Keiichi Yabu

[Crash Course]

A's bolster staff with Japanese star. (http://oakland.athletics.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/oak/news/oak_news.jsp?ymd=20050112&content_id=930439&vkey=news_oak&fext=.jsp)

Must be nice to have the resources to go out and "buy" a "star" any time you need one. OK, just kidding there.

If Yabu makes it, he'll be the 18th native Japanese pitcher to hurl in the majors. Quick trivia: Of the 17 who preceded him, how many went on to collect 200+ IP with a positive RSAA? Answer: Just five. (Shigetoshi Hasegawa, Tomo Ohka, Kazuhiro Sasaki, Masato Yoshii and Hideo Nomo.)

That's a "success rate" (for lack of a better term) of less than 30% (5 out of 17). Couldn't anyone on Billy's team do that math?

Anyway, the really important thing here is that his interpreter will be around. See:

"I hear his interpreter's a cool dude who's really into music, too," said Barry Zito, who plays guitar in his sister's band, The Sally Zito Project, in the offseason. "So I'm looking forward to getting to know both of them."
Good to see that the leader of the A's staff really has his priorities straight. It's going to be a good year for Moneyball in 2005.

[SteveP]

If Yabu makes it, he'll be the 18th native Japanese pitcher to hurl in the majors.

Does that include Stephen Randolph?

And Japanese Star is stretching it just a bit for Yabu. He's won 10 games once since 1998, and is something like 85-106 with a 3.57 ERA and 5.6K's with reasonable control and he's 36. They keep talking about him as a starter (which is what he was in Japan for Hanshin), but he looks like a specialty/junk pitcher to me.

[Crash Course]

Nah - not including Randolph and the other American names born in Japan.

Agreed that star is a reach - - if he was, he would have been getting more attention, and more $, given the need for pitching by so many teams.