| | | | Thursday, December 12, 2024 | | 105 days until Opening Day … | | I had this whole intro written on the topic of today's newsletter, and how MLB has been so enriched by the contributions of Japanese and Korean players in recent years and decades. About how believing in players from overseas has been an incredibly fruitful endeavor for Fantasy Baseball players and how there might be a market inefficiency there for your drafts that you might be able to take advantage of in 2025. | | And then I took a step back and remembered, "Oh yeah, it's Hot Stove season, we've gotta talk about news!" And a lot of news has happened since the last time I was in your inbox, even if that was just two days ago. | | So, please keep reading for everything you need to know about the stars coming to MLB from Japan and Korea this offseason. But before we get to that, here are some quick thoughts on all of the news that has gone down since last we spoke -- and you can learn even more about all of these moves in our Offseason Tracker piece that Scott White and I have been diligently updating: | | Garrett Crochet was traded to the Red Sox! It's a much better situation for Crochet in terms of supporting cast, and it's probably a bit neutral in terms of home park. But here's the thing: If Garrett Crochet is as good as he was in the first half of last season again, none of that matters because he's going to compete for Cy Young trophies. The problem is, we're in totally uncharted waters as far as his innings from 2024 go, and we just don't know how he's going to bounce back from that. Crochet has been going off the board as a top-five SP of late, and I just don't think that price is baking in the downside enough. I wrote more about that and the White Sox's kind-of-interesting prospect package, including two players who could matter as soon as Opening Day of 2025. | | Max Fried signed with the Yankees! As Scott White notes here , the "pending physical" part of this does loom somewhat larger than with most big deals, thanks to the time Fried has missed in the past two seasons with forearm and elbow concerns. There's no reason to think it'll be enough to derail the deal, and Fried's groundball and contact-suppressing ways should serve him well in Yankee Stadium. But it's a reminder of the risk in this specific deal. | | Jake Burger was traded to the Rangers! I think Burger was already being overdrafted with an ADP around 125, and I'm not sure this trade is going to knock him down a peg. It probably should. Yes, it's a better lineup and home park, but the playing time picture in Texas is much less clear. If he gets off to another putrid start, Burger could just be out of a job before midseason. | | Andres Gimenez was traded to the Blue Jays! This was more or less a pure salary dump for the Guardians , and Toronto is a slightly better home park for hitting than Cleveland. But Gimenez probably is who he is at this point: A BABIP-dependent steals source. This trade doesn't really change that. Meanwhile, Spencer Horwitz might be in a slightly better spot in Pittsburgh than he was in Toronto's crowded infield, but I'm just not sure he's much more than a platoon bat. | | Nathan Eovaldi signed with the Rangers! The status quo reigns. Eovaldi is typically very useful for stretches, but he rarely puts together great seasons. I don't expect that to change in his late-30s. | | The moves are starting to come in more rapidly, and I suspect we'll have even more to discuss next week. For now, let's meet the biggest names from Japan and Korea who are making the leap to MLB this offseason: | | | | Meet the NPB/KBO imports | | | | Okay, before we get into each player, I want to provide some context for the numbers you're about to see. Because while they're playing the same sport in each league, the way they go about it in each one is very different. | | For example, NPB is currently in the middle of a pretty extreme deadball era. Roki Sasaki pitched in the Japan Pacific League, where the average -- average -- ERA was 3.04. That's more than a run lower than the ERA in MLB last year, which was 4.07. Strikeouts and walks are both less prevalent in Japan, as well, as are stolen bases and, obviously, home runs. So, when you see some of the eye-popping numbers from pitchers in Japan especially, keep in mind how different the offensive environment is. | | And the opposite is true in the KBO, where teams averaged 5.38 runs per game in 2024 -- just south of the Diamondbacks' MLB-best 5.47 mark from 2024. The strikeout rate in Korea is similar to Japan, about four percentage points lower than the MLB mark from 2024, and walk rates on the whole are slightly higher. Home run rates are slightly lower in KBO than in MLB, but the biggest difference is in batting average -- BABIP in the KBO last year was .325, compared to .291 in the majors. | | And then, of course, there's the fact that the overall level of play is going to tend to be lower. That is more true in Korea than Japan, but it is probably true enough that you can't just take a player's stats in one league and compare them to another. A .900 OPS in Korea isn't a .900 OPS in Japan, and that won't be a .900 OPS in the majors, in all likelihood. Both leagues have plenty of MLB-caliber players, obviously, but given the different environments and levels of play, it means you can't just make one-to-one comparisons statistically. Heck, they even use slightly different baseballs across leagues, with the NPB balls typically featuring smaller seams and a pre-tacked surface that makes gripping the ball easier. | | So, take the stats you see here with a grain of salt. I've tried to contextualize each player's performance where appropriate, but trying to project these players' performance in the majors is as much art as science: | | | | Roki Sasaki | From: Rikuzentakata, Iwate, Japan
Age: 23
Position: Pitcher
Superlatives: Two-time NPB All-Star, NPB Single-game strikeout record (19)
Scouting report: His fastball touches 100 mph, and in years past, he has sat close to that – he was at 98.9 mph on average with his four-seamer in 2023. That number dipped to 96.9 mph in 2024 as he has dealt with some arm injuries over the past few years. He also throws a gyro slider around 84 mph and a splitter that is probably the best pitch of the bunch; he had a 57% whiff rate per swing on the splitter last season, a mark only one pitcher (a reliever) bested in MLB in 2024. It's definitely an MLB-caliber profile and probably a high-end starter's profile, but the lost velocity could be the difference between a very good mid-rotation arm and a true ace.
2024 Stats: 2.35 ERA, 111 IP, 129 K, 1.036 WHIP, 10 W in 18 GS | | MLB Expectations | | In the long run, I think Sasaki might have as much upside as any pitcher in baseball, maybe short of Paul Skenes. If the arsenal gets back to where it was prior to 2024, it's hard to overstate how high the ceiling could be – in a piece scouting Sasaki's data, Eno Sarris comped his fastball (at its best) to Hunter Greene's, his slider to Andres Muñoz's, and the splitter to, well … there might not be a lot of comps in the whole world for a low-90s splitter that dies the way this one does. | | Sasaki is also in rarified air among Japanese starters in strikeout-minus-walk rate, sporting a 28.4% mark over the past three seasons, per Sarris' research; the previous best three-year mark for a Japanese pitcher coming to America was Shohei Ohtani's 22.7% mark. His numbers speak for themselves. | | But for 2025, I think there's a decent chance Sasaki is being at least a little bit overrated for Fantasy. I think too many are viewing him more or less how they viewed Yoshinobu Yamamoto a year ago, and drafting Sasaki as if an ace-level outcome in 2025 is not only possible but likely. And that's where I'm struggling with his value right now. As I pointed out in an earlier newsletter, Sasaki's production in Japan, while impressive, was simply nowhere near Yamamoto's once you account for league context: | | Sasaki | | 2022: 156 ERA+2023: 177 ERA+2024: 129 ERA+ | | Yoshinobu Yamamoto | | 2021: 250 ERA+2022: 188 ERA+2023: 272 ERA+ | | Sasaki might be a comparable talent, but he's much less of a finished product right now. He has never thrown 130 innings in a season, and that was back in 2022; injuries have limited him to 91 and 111 over the past two seasons. He should still be a very good pitcher in the majors in 2024, but given that he has never pitched on four-day's rest and has had multiple upper body/arm injuries in the past couple of seasons, and it feels like an awfully risky profile without even accounting for whatever growing pains there might be with the transition to the majors. | | In the month since Sasaki's posting was confirmed, he is going off the board as the No. 21 SP in early NFC drafts. Given the way guys like Kodai Senga and Shota Imanaga have outperformed expectations – and the fact that Sasaki comes to the majors with outsized expectations of his own – I understand the desire not to miss out on what could be a generational talent. But if you're just projecting for 2025, I have a hard time expecting much more than 140-ish innings from Sasaki. Sasaki, in some ways, personifies the idea of the "mystery box" in Fantasy Baseball – he could be anything! – but that works both ways; he could struggle to find his footing just as easily as he could take the league by storm and become a unanimous Rookie of the Year. And I suspect his price is only going to grow once he signs. I'm probably out on Sasaki for 2025. | | | | Tomoyuki Sugano | From: Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan
Age: 35
Position: Pitcher
Superlatives: Three-time Central League MVP (2014, 2020, 2024), Pitching Triple Crown (2018), Eight-time NPB All-Star, Four-time CL League ERA league, Two-time CL strikeout leader
Scouting report: Sugano is a 12-year NPB veteran who has consistently been one of the league's best players – see the MVP awards a decade apart. He'll make his MLB debut as a 35-year-old with 1,873 innings under his belt, and at this point, he certainly seems to fit the "crafty vet" mold. He has a six-pitch mix, led by a four-seamer that averaged 91.9 mph last season and was, predictably enough, a pretty mediocre swing-and-miss pitch, sporting a 10.2% whiff rate in 2024. He complements that with a kitchen-sink arsenal: He threw a cutter and slider both 20% of the time, with the cutter coming in around 87 mph and the slider at 82.2; like many Japanese pitchers, his splitter is his premier swing-and-miss pitch, an 86 mph pitch he threw a bit more often against lefties; there is also a low 90s sinker and a high-70s curveball. Sugano did miss much of 2023 with an elbow injury but bounced back in a huge way in 2024, a sign that he put that injury and a few years of declining performance behind him. Good timing!
2024 Stats: 1.67 ERA, 156.2 IP, 111 K, 0.945 WHIP, 15 W in 24 GS | | MLB expectations | | Sugano was terrific in 2024, but it came after a three-year period where he kind of looked to be in freefall in his mid-30s. From 2021 through 2023, Sugano had a 3.23 ERA, and if you're thinking that doesn't sound like much of a free-fall, I'll remind you (once again) that the NPB has become an incredibly pitcher-friendly league in recent years, to the point where his 3.14 ERA in 2023 was basically dead-on the league average mark of 3.19. For some context, Imanaga's ERA was nearly a half-run lower, while his strikeout rate was significantly higher. | | None of that is to say Sugano can't be an effective pitcher in the majors. There are several middling strikeout rate pitchers who have been effective in recent years with a kitchen-sink arsenal, most notably names like Seth Lugo and Chris Bassitt . But Bassitt is a good example of how fragile that profile can be, as his walk rate regressed in 2024, and he kind of fell apart as a result. Sugano's command is considered his strongest trait, and he showed in 2024 he can still be effective at his age. But he feels more like a mid-rotation pitcher in real life, and one with strikeout limitations and enough injury concerns to relegate him to the late-round flier range of drafts. How draftable he ends up being might end up depending on where he signs and what his early-season streaming schedule looks like. | | Hye-Seong Kim | From: Goyang, Gyeonggi, South Korea
Age: 25
Position: Infielder
Superlatives: Three-time KBO Golden Glove, KBO SB leader (2021)
Scouting report: No relation to Ha-Seong Kim , who has been arguably the most successful former KBO star to make the transition to the majors as a hitter. But the new Kim shares some traits with the former Padre, as he is also a very good and versatile defender, having been the only KBO player to win a Golden Glove award at both second base and shortstop. He's also a good contact hitter with great speed, and he's coming off a season where he hit a career-high in homers.
2024 Stats: .326/.383/.458, 11 homers, 30 steals, 75 RBI, 90 runs in 127 games | | MLB Expectations | | Of course, as you can see, "a career-high in homers" was just 11 for Kim; for comparison, Ha-Seong Kim's career-high in Korea was 30, and he's hardly been much of a power hitter in the majors. Hyeseong Kim has even less power, with similar strikeout rates and fewer walks. It's a very fringe-y offensive profile, and he just might not hit enough at the MLB level to be an everyday player. Even if he does hit, it feels like the ceiling might be as an Andres Gimenez type, where he might luck into a high BABIP and flirt with a .300 average in a career year but will probably settle in as a fringe Fantasy option even if he steals 30 bases. | | Shinnosuke Ogasawara | From: Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan
Age: 27
Position: Pitcher
Superlatives: One-time All-Star
Scouting report: Ogasawara shares some characteristics with Imanaga, who was also a shorter lefty without premium velocity. In Ogasawara's case , it's a four-seam fastball that comes in around 89-90 mph, plus four secondaries: a 78 mph changeup, a 79 mph slider, a 70 mph curveball, and an 82 mph splitter. The splitter and changeup are distinct from one another, and Ogasawara might do well to follow Imanaga's lead and prioritize the splitter, which led all of his pitches (by a not-insignificant margin) with a 39.5% whiff rate in 2024. Strikeouts have not been a big part of Ogasawara's game, as he had just a 13.6% rate in 2024; despite that, his exemplary control still gave him a 3.73 K:BB ratio.
2024 Stats: 3.12 ERA, 144.1 IP, 82 K, 1.199 WHIP, 5 W in 24 GS | | MLB Expectations | | There was a big dropoff in expectations between the No. 2 and No. 3 players on this list, and there's probably another one here. Ogasawara is a soft-tossing, control-oriented lefty, and he was roughly an average pitcher last season in the NPB, so you would probably project that even worse in a league like the majors, where damage on contact tends to be much greater. You could perhaps see a world in which Ogasawara follows the Imanaga model, focusing on four-seamers up in the zone and splitters down, with his other secondaries looming to keep hitters off balance. But given how hard it is to consistently throw a splitter for strikes – and the fact that Ogasawara threw the pitch just 3.3% of the time in 2024 – I don't think we can expect that. Throw him on the pile of late-round streamers to target if the early-season matchups are viable, though this is one case where it's not at all guaranteed that Ogasawara will actually sign with an MLB team during his posting window. | | Kyle Hart | From: Cincinnati, Ohio, United States
Age: 32
Position: Pitcher
Superlatives: 2024 Choi Dong-won Award (KBO's best pitcher)
Scouting report: Hart is a veteran lefty who went to the KBO after flaming out of the majors, and he very much fits the "crafty lefty" stereotype. He has a low-90s fastball that comes out of a low arm slot, and he primarily pairs it with a solid slider. He also has a changeup, a cutter, and a curveball, according to Eric Longenhagen's scouting report at FanGraphs.com . Hart has a chance to establish himself as a back-of-the-rotation arm if he signs somewhere.
2024 Stats: 3.12 ERA, 144.1 IP, 82 K, 1.199 WHIP, 5 W in 24 GS | | MLB Expectations | | Cards on the table: If Erick Fedde hadn't made a successful transition back to the majors from a stop in the KBO, we probably wouldn't be paying Hart a second thought. But Merrill Kelly also pulled it off and has established himself as a viable major-leaguer again, so we'll take a look at Hart, who thrived in the KBO last season. | | (Also, as an aside, Hart is a good quote, and a not-insignificant part of me wanted to include this gem from a recent MassLive.com story about his attempted return to the majors: | | "There have been times where I'm embarrassed to even tell people I was in the big leagues because they're going to Google me and be like, 'This dip-(expletive) had a (expletive) 16 ERA,'" Hart said recently. "There's a piece of me that is pissed off and embarrassed and would love to get a sample size of a couple hundred innings and see what we're looking at. If I have (an ERA of) 15 (again), I'll go dig a hole, and you'll never hear from me again." | | How could you not root for this guy?) | | Hart fizzled out in the high-minors after a pretty promising first couple of years in the majors, and it doesn't sound like he changed his arsenal much since his ill-fated MLB debut back in 2020. However, he does note that he tweaked his slider in a way that helped him stay a bit more consistent with it, and also saw a bit of a velocity jump – something he attributes at least in part to not being at full strength following a battle with Lyme disease when he got his first chance in the majors. If he's throwing more like 91-93 with an improved slider, maybe that will be enough for Hart to follow in Kelly and Fedde's path back to the majors. | | | | | | | | 24/7 Sports News | | Golazo Network | Stream CBS Sports HQ, your free, 24/7 snapshot of all the sports that matter to you. Catch highlights, in-depth analysis & breaking news anywhere you are. Download the CBS Sports App to watch today.
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