MLB New Import Tracker (June 14-28, 2008)

Been a while since we checked in with the imports, so let’s get to it.

Kosuke Fukudome, RF—#1—Chicago Cubs
Birthplace: Kagoshima, Japan
What’s the current line on Japanese sensation Kosuke Fukudome? .299/.404/.440 with 53 runs, 7 SBs and an almost-even K/BB. As a bonus, Alfonso Soriano is on the DL again, which means Fukudome’s hitting leadoff for the foreseeable future. Kudos to Sweet Lou for finally making this change, even though it makes the middle of his lineup a little righty-heavy.

I’ve been begging for it here since the beginning of the season: Fukudome should hit leadoff. He's got above-average speed, he sees a ton of pitches per at-bat, and every manager in baseball will take that kind of OBP from their leadoff guy. Since moving into the leadoff spot permanently, he’s 8-for-25 (.320) with 7 runs and one jack. The strikeouts have increased however—8 Ks to only 3 BBs, but it’s really too early to tell if this is a trend or just a small sample size. For their part, the Cubs don’t seem to care who leads off. They’re the highest scoring team in baseball.

John Dewan’s Plus/Minus System (as described in his ’05 book, The Fielding Bible) currently ranks Fukudome as the 10th best right fielder in baseball, and the 8th best right fielder when it comes to stopping opposing runners from advancing. Despite notching only one baserunner “kill” so far this season, baserunners and coaches bow in respect to his cannon arm.

One of the rooftop bars behind the right field wall at Wrigley is flying the Japanese flag now. It’s a nice touch.

Kazuo Fukumori, RP—#14—Texas Rangers
Birthplace: Osaka, Japan
Demoted to AAA-Oklahoma.

Masahide Kobayashi, RP—#30—Cleveland Indians
Birthplace: Yamanashi, Japan
Would the real closer for the Cleveland Indians please stand up?

Masa Kobayashi recorded his fourth save on June 20 after de facto closer Joe Borowski let the lead slip away in the ninth. In the last month, Kobayashi has earned four saves—but he’s also appeared as early as the sixth inning. What gives? The Cleveland bullpen looks like a shell game right now with Rafael Betancourt, Rafael Perez and Kobayshi all being called on in late innings—mostly to set up Borowski.

It’s really no surprise manager Eric Wedge views these three guys as interchangeable—every time he looks to the bullpen he must feel like he’s keeping his own three-headed hydra as a pet. To have a little fun, I’ve listed stats on Cleveland’s three set up men, without their names, so we can see what Wedge has to choose from on a nightly basis:

	W	L	SV	SVO	G	IP	ERA	WHIP	K/9
Player A	2	4	4	6	35	34.2	5.97	1.53	9.35
Player B	4	3	4	6	37	39.0	3.23	1.23	5.77
Player C	1	1	0	2	36	35.2	3.28	1.40	9.08

Dynasty league players deal with this scenario all the time, of course. Three arms in the bullpen, all more or less interchangeable. They’ll post on their league’s forum asking for advice: Where to pitch these guys?

So imagine you’re Eric Wedge. Accept that ownership (or someone) is holding a gun to your head and making you stick with Borowski as your closer. You’ve got three additional sets of stats for three players. Who do you want pitching the seventh? The eighth? If you can swing it…the ninth? Do you sacrifice a lower K/9 for a lower WHIP? Or is ERA all that matters? By the way, Player A is Rafael Betancourt. Player B is Masa Kobayashi. Player C is Rafael Perez.

Eric Wedge hasn’t figured it out yet. And you know what? The Indians aren’t going anywhere, so he doesn’t really have to.

Hiroki Kuroda, RP—#18 —Los Angeles Dodgers
Birthplace: Osaka, Japan
I admit I don’t know everything that goes into a manager’s job description, but I would think that knowing the relative health of one’s employees would be in there somewhere. Apparently not for Dodger manager Joe Torre, who wasn’t aware of Hiroki Kuroda’s shoulder treatments until the time came to put him on the DL with “shoulder tendinitis.”

I guess I get it on the one hand—upper management can’t be bothered with minutia (although I’m not sure a starting pitcher receiving shoulder treatments is something that should really be left off the staff meeting agenda). And, if he’s like most ballplayers, Kuroda sure as heck isn’t going to come out and tell Torre he isn’t able to pitch. But a little more communication, in this instance, probably would have been in order. Send a fax. Leave a post-it. All of which Torre—always a class act—now readily admits.

On the bright side, it looks like Kuroda will only miss one start. He’s scheduled to go Saturday against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. He hurled a beaut against the Cubs at home on June 6, going the distance in an 11-K shutout performance. He came back on June 12 and lasted only 2 1/3 against the Padres at PETCO, making the Padres’ Dinky Toy offense look like Murderer’s Row. So maybe he spent whatever he had left against the Cubbies…right before his arm fell off.

He continues to be a solid starter, maintaining a 4.04 ERA, a 1.35 WHIP, and a 50/27 K/BB ratio. Courtesy of Bill James Online, 60 of Kuroda’s 82 1/3 innings have been shutout innings, and he’s only allowed three runs or more in an inning four times. He’s pitched more than half his innings against teams with records under .500, but in the 21.2 innings he’s pitched against teams over .600, he sports a 1.66 ERA and a whopping 19/5 K/BB ratio (mostly courtesy of the Cubbies).

Aha! So that’s the problem. He’s just not being challenged. Time to give this corporate climber a promotion.

Alexei Ramirez, OF/2B—#10—Chicago White Sox
Birthplace: Pinar del Rio, Cuba
Well, look who’s got his batting average up to .284! It’s amazing what the assurance of playing every day can do for a player’s morale.

In June, he’s batting .352 with three homers and 14 RBIs in 18 games. He’s hitting in the bottom third of the order, the pressure’s off, he’s playing almost every game at second base, and as a result the bat is starting to come around. Manager Ozzie Guillen has already started talking him up for eventual ROY honors…although it might be tough to beat out Jacoby Ellsbury and the East Coast Bias.

White Sox hitting coach Greg Walker had this to say about Ramirez:

He has that look like he's on a mission. But if you look at him physically, being thin like he is, you don't realize how strong he is, how quick he is. But his mechanics, when they're good, they're really good. When they're bad, they can get very bad.

Which is why he sometimes lays into one and rips it into the gap for a double—and why sometimes he takes three feeble swings and goes back to sit on the bench.

The Fantasy Baseball Generals have a little bit about what we can expect from Ramirez going forward. His BABIP is a little bit high, but his line drive rate suggests there might be more improvement ahead. Writer Andrew Cleary offers a good breakdown of Ramirez as a hitter—check it out.

Ramirez’ defense was the biggest concern for the Sox coming out of spring training, and (citing John Dewan’s Plus/Minus System again) he’s ranked 19th of all second baseman so far in 2008, notching a +1 on balls in the air but a -2 on groundballs. If you’re not familiar with +/-, all this means is that Ramirez has made one more play than could be expected of an average second baseman on balls hit in the air—and two less plays than average on balls hit on the ground. Given that he’s played all over the diamond so far, a little shakiness is to be excused, in my opinion.

The sad part about all this is that his .311 OBP is still 40 points higher than Juan Uribe’s.

Yasuhiko Yabuta, RP—#27—Kansas City Royals
Birthplace: Osaka, Japan
I don’t know if the Kansas City Star is like the US Magazine of sports or what, but here’s something else they had to say about Yasuhiko Yabuta:

It's inevitable, perhaps, that Royals reliever Yasuhiko Yabuta would acquire "Shake" as a nickname—Shake Yabuta—but that sure beats other less-kind alternatives.

I know, I know. Freakin’ Midwest. But look. It’s Kansas City. They’re Royals fans. They get excited about Lima Time for god sake. Let’s cut ‘em some slack.

He’s still getting knocked around like a pinball, but look how great he looks in the throwback Kansas City Monarchs uniform:

BREAKING NEWS:
According to the Kansas City Star:

The Royals optioned reliever Yasuhiko Yabuta to Class AAA Omaha before Wednesday's game against Colorado in order to clear roster space for the addition of reliever Robinson Tejeda.

Godspeed, Shake.

Dave Wilder? You are...Dave Wilder?

I’m not entirely sure how I missed this, being that I follow the pale hose pretty closely and read the blogosphere every day. But miss it I did.

Back on May 16, 2008, the Chicago White Sox canned scouting director Dave Wilder when the front office found out that he and two other scouts were being investigated by the feds for allegedly skimming off prospects in the Dominican Republic. Wilder cut his teeth with the Braves’ dynasty of the early ‘90s and was running both the west coast and Latin American scouting operations for the Sox. Generally recognized as one of baseball’s best and brightest, Wilder was in the running for the Red Sox GM position at one point and considered by many to be a lock for a GM role some day.

SouthsideSox.com offers the best description of what Wilder and his cronies were up to (allegedly). In a nut shell, Wilder would (allegedly) find really bad Dominican baseball players who weren’t represented by anyone. He would then offer these players $100K contracts—but also act as their agent, taking a percentage of the money he offered for himself as an “agent fee.” He also may have supplied players with fake birth certificates that lowered their ages by as much as five years (sic) and even dealt his clients PEDs.

And this wasn’t just some desperate scout with mouths to feed back home—this was the scouting director. Of the Chicago White Sox.

I tend to think of crimes as happening on a 100-point sliding scale. A “1” crime is something like sneaking out late one night to toilet paper your best friend’s house. A “100” crime is something so heinous it’s earned its own level of Hell.

So while not quite on the level of genocide, the Wilder scandal remains an inspiration precisely because it’s so low-class. Not only did it defraud third-world minors (stealing their money while pumping them full of hopes and dreams that will never be realized), you’ve also got an international drug-dealing angle plus the fact that Wilder defrauded the U.S. government with fake birth certificates—all while squandering his employer’s money and pocketing 15%. Not bad! I give it a 68, with the chance to improve on that score if it turns out anyone higher up in the Sox organization is involved.

There’s been no additional news on this for over a month. And really, it’s no surprise I missed the story when it broke—it was swept under the rug by both the Sox and MLB (as well as the local newspapers in Chi-town) almost as soon as it happened. It’s an ugly story that underscores just how vulnerable international prospects really are.

Viciedo Arrives

There's truth to the rumor afterall. ESPN.com is now reporting that Cuban mega-prospect Dayan Viciedo has in fact defected to the United States. He is now living with family and friends in south Florida, according to his agent, Jaime Torres.

MLB Trade Rumors lists the Astros, Yankees, Cardinals, Mets and Pirates as teams that are considering signing the Cuban emigre, but really, what team wouldn't be interested in the services of a stud 18-year-old third baseman?

There is one issue, though. I threw away the edition (dope!) before following up this story, but ESPN The Magazine reported that the question facing Viciedo now is this: Because he was officially in the United States prior to the MLB amateur draft on June 4, Vicideo was technically eligible to be selected by an MLB team (so argues Torres). Because he wasn't selected, he is now a free agent and eligible to sign with any team that expresses interest.

MLB will have to decide on this issue soon; if Viciedo is declared a free agent, he might be the most coveted bat on the market.

Just remember, you heard it here first.