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Maybe it's time we stop underrating pitchers from Asian Countries
According to Baseball-Reference’s Place of Birth Report, there are 13 major
league players currently active who were born in either Japan, South Korea,
or Taiwan. Of those 13, only four are position players — Ichiro Suzuki,
Norichika Aoki, Munenori Kawasaki, and Shin-Soo Choo. Major League Baseball
has historically been more willing to bringing pitchers across the Pacific,
and that remains true today. However, the performance of the nine active
pitchers currently working in the big leagues suggests that perhaps the
discount rate being applied to pitchers from those regions might still be too
high.
Here’s how those nine pitchers have done in the first five weeks of the 2013
season.
现役MLB有13位亚洲选手，有9位是投手!!
虽然大联盟招揽亚洲球员已行之有年，但看看这些现役投手的表现，实在太便宜了!!
Name IP BB/9 K/9 HR/9 BABIP ERA FIP xFIP WAR
Yu Darvish 45.2 3.0 14.2 0.6 0.282 2.56 1.90 1.97 1.9
Hyun-Jin Ryu 43.2 2.5 9.9 0.8 0.322 3.71 2.83 3.17 1.0
Hisashi Iwakuma 44.2 1.6 8.5 1.0 0.191 1.61 3.19 3.36 1.0
Hiroki Kuroda 36.0 2.8 7.5 0.5 0.248 2.25 3.15 3.72 0.9
Wei-Yin Chen 36.0 3.0 5.5 0.8 0.264 3.50 3.96 5.22 0.7
Junichi Tazawa 14.1 1.9 11.3 1.3 0.281 2.51 2.95 2.75 0.3
Koji Uehara 13.2 1.3 11.2 2.0 0.250 2.63 3.82 3.09 0.2
Kyuji Fujikawa 4.1 2.1 8.3 - 0.471 12.46 2.55 3.89 0.1
Hisanori Takahashi 3.0 6.0 9.0 3.0 0.250 6.00 7.35 4.95 (0.1)
看看2013前五周这几位投手的表现，
加起来可以和去年V壮年表现不相上下
Name IP BB/9 K/9 HR/9 BABIP ERA FIP xFIP WAR
Group Total 241.1 2.5 9.6 0.9 0.267 2.91 3.05 3.37 6.0
Justin Verlander 239.1 2.4 9.3 0.7 0.288 2.48 2.83 3.20 7.2
All told, the 2013 active pitchers from Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea have
put up the near equivalent of one Justin Verlander season. Darvish is
obviously driving the numbers up with his ridiculous start to the season, but
Iwakuma, Kuroda, and Ryu have also been excellent in their own right, while
Chen is succeeding by keeping the ball in the ballpark, at least for now.
And then there’s the Red Sox duo of relievers, Tazawa and Uehara, who have
combined to strike out 35 batters while issuing three unintentional walks.
These crazy high strikeout-to-walk ratios are nothing new for Uehara, who
already owns the best K/BB in the history of Major League Baseball. Tazawa,
meanwhile, has been absolutely spectacular for the Red Sox after returning
from Tommy John surgery last year, running a 63/8 K/BB ratio of his own since
the start of the 2012 season.
达比修有当然是鬼神数据，岩隈久志、黑田博树、柳贤振表现很好
而陈伟殷成功压低被全垒打数
田泽纯一、上原浩治则为红袜牛棚做出贡献
上原有超夸张的K/BB比，田泽则在动完TJ后表现出色
And yet, besides Darvish, the rest of the gang pretty much still flies under
the radar. Kuroda has quietly been one of the best pitchers in baseball since
arriving in the U.S., and even after shifting to the American League East at
the age of 37, he’s shown no signs of slowing down. Iwakuma signed with the
Mariners for a few million dollars last year and got buried in long relief
until mid-season, when the team finally put him in the rotation and let him
show what he could do; since then, opponents have hit just .222/.277/.355
against him. The Dodgers were criticized for overspending on Ryu over the
winter, since there was concern about whether he could succeed in the big
leagues with an average fastball and a mediocre breaking ball. As Bradley
noted yesterday, he’s destroyed National League hitters with ease so far.
黑田来到美国后逐渐成为联盟中的最佳投手之一
虽然已经37岁而且在美联东区，但一点也没有老化的迹象
去年岩隈在牛棚被埋没，球队最后让他进入轮值
他也缴出.222/.277/.355的成绩
而道奇在冬天被批评买柳贤振太贵，因为他被评价为直球平均变化球普普的投手
不过他目前已经可以轻松面对国联打者
The lingering memory of failures like Daisuke Matsuzaka, Kei Igawa, Hideki
Irabu, and Kenshin Kawakami still loom in everyone’s memories, but this
current crop of pitchers from Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are dominating
Major League Baseball right now. It could be that Major League scouts are
just getting better at identifying which pitchers will succeed in the U.S.,
or perhaps these pitchers are just more ready to succeed in the highest
levels than the pitchers who came before them.
虽然像松坂大辅、井川庆、伊良部秀辉、川上宪伸等失败例子的阴影挥之不去
但这些现役亚裔投手正在主宰MLB
有可能是球探们越来越会判断哪些球员可以适应MLB
或这些选手已经准备好挑战更高的联盟
Regardless, it’s time to recognize the great success that teams have had in
plucking pitchers out of Pacific Rim countries. While they still get
classified as prospects because of the lack of track records they have
against Major League hitters, the performance of pitchers from these
countries far outstrips anything we see from pitching prospects getting
promoted through the minor leagues here in America. Of the nine active
pitchers on the list, you could make a legitimate All-Star case for six of
them right now. The success rate of this crop is absurdly high.
Now, we can’t simply say that because Darvish, Iwakuma, Kuroda, and the rest
are all pitching extraordinarily well in MLB that every pitcher in a
professional league in Asia is ready to make the jump any more than we can
say that the success of Shelby Miller means that every pitcher in Triple-A is
ready for the show. However, I do think it is fair to ask whether MLB teams
are applying an inappropriately high discount rate to pitchers from these
leagues. The emphasis on velocity and breaking balls in international
scouting may very well be causing teams to underestimate the success that
pitchers with average fastballs but great splitter/change-ups will have on
this side of the ocean.
无论如何，我们现在必须承认这些从环太平洋国家榨取人才的球团的成功
虽然这些球员在登入MLB时被当成新秀
但这些"新秀"的表现早就超越农场系统拔上来的大物
这九位投手中，你已经可以合理的选出六位明星级球员，成功率很高
我们虽不能说因为这些亚洲投手的成功
就代表其他亚洲职业联盟的投手就比3A的农作物更接近MLB，例如Shelby Miller
但我认为MLB球团对亚洲球员的评价方式是有待商榷的
国际球探对直球速度和变化球的犀利度过份强调
往往会忽略那些直球普通但变速/指叉相当强悍的投手
Darvish and Tazawa are the only two pitchers on this list that don’t feature
a split or a change-up as their best off-speed offering, but these pitches
are often the most effective at neutralizing opposite-handed hitters. By also
commanding an average fastball and taking advantage of natural platoon
advantages against same-handed hitters, the combination of skills has proven
to be quite successful. 88-92 with a plus change-up/splitter might not
profile as a top-end pitcher as well as throwing 95 with a knockout slider,
but there’s no question that this skillset works in Major League Baseball,
especially if you have top shelf command.
达比修和田泽是这份名单中唯二不用变速/指叉做武器球的投手
但这些变速系的投手在解决反手打者时是非常有效率的
而面对同手打者时，藉著天生优势，会变得更有效率
88~92MPH的速球搭配变速/指叉虽然可能没像95M速球和锐利滑球来的印象深刻
但这种技能在MLB生存是毫无疑问的，尤其你还有良好的控球时
I think it is certainly possible that the types of pitchers that are
successful in Pacific Rim countries are also the types of pitchers that are
underrated in Major League Baseball. You could point to guys like James
Shields, Doug Fister, and Tommy Milone as American versions of this same
skillset, and none of them were considered top prospects coming up through
the minors either. I don’t think this is so much a race issue as it is a
skill valuation issue. But, at some point, we have to reevaluate what kinds
of skills we’re placing an emphasis on, if pitchers with a different type of
skillset are regularly outperforming our expectations.
Given their complete dominance of Major League Baseball right now, it’s
probably time to recalibrate our expectations for pitchers from that region
of the world.
我相信环太平洋来的这些成功的投手的型态
和在MLB被低估的投手是一样的
例如James Shields, Doug Fister, Tommy Milone
这些人在小联盟时从来不被认为是顶级新秀
我不认为这是种族问题而是一个如何估计投手能力的问题
我们必须更新我们估计投手能力的方式
如果这些投手持续有让我们意料之外的好表现
因为这些亚洲投手的发光发热
也许是时候我们该对这些地方的投手有新的认知