What with all the other international hoopla of the last few weeks, it’s understandable that Japanese lefty Shinnosuke Ogasawara has fallen off our radars. The Cubs reportedly have interest in him, and his posting window concludes tomorrow. So there will be a resolution one way or another very soon.
As we’ve discussed, he’s a tricky one to project in MLB, which makes it all the more difficult to say what kind of deal he could get (or if he’d settle for a minor league deal). I’m certainly intrigued, though, and I’ll be curious to see what happens tomorrow.
He’s been working out at Driveline, by the way, so I expect teams have gotten plenty of eyes on Ogasawara:
The Cubs obviously had tremendous success last offseason signing fellow lefty Shōta Imanaga, who’d been very underrated in the free agent market. But Imanaga was a much more dominant pitcher in Japan, had a style that more obviously could (on paper) translate to MLB, and was considered a much bigger name. That isn’t to dump on Ogasawara, who has been very good in Japan, particularly the last few years, but it is only to set some expectations. The two are probably not comparable.
The one big thing Ogasawara has going for him, though, is relative youth: he only just turned 27. I doubt there’s much physical projection left available, but development as a pitcher? Development with his grips, pitch selection, movement profile, etc.? He’s definitely still right in that window.
Here’s how Baseball America wrote up Ogasawara earlier in the offseason:
“Ogasawara is a physical, muscular lefthander who commands a deep arsenal. His fastball sits 89-91 mph and touches 94 without much life, but he locates it effectively to both sides of the plate. His best secondary pitch is an average [changeup], 76-80 mph that mirrors his fastball. He occasionally alters his grip to make it a split-change at 82-83 with similar action to give hitters another pitch to think about. Ogasawara primarily throws his fastball and changeup, but he’ll mix in a fringy slider and a looping, low-70s curveball with decent depth to keep hitters off balance. He holds runners extremely well and controls the pace and tempo of the game. Ogasawara relies on inducing weak contact rather than swings and misses and his stuff leaves him little margin for error, but he has plus control to effectively work the edges of the strike zone.”
As you might expect based on that scouting report, BA projects Ogasawara as a potential 5th starter in the big leagues, or as a swing man in the bullpen.
Given the Cubs’ current volume of (preference for?) lefties in the rotation, and relative dearth of lefty options in the reliever depth pool, you could imagine a world where the Cubs like the idea of simply adding Ogasawara to the pitching staff mix. Maybe not explicitly as a member of the rotation, maybe not explicitly as a member of the bullpen. Just kind of a guy you like, who might fill that Drew Smyly role, and you deploy him as needed at any given time.
That is to say, even if it comes out that the Cubs really are pursuing Shinnosuke Ogasawara, I wouldn’t necessarily conceive of it as the Cubs looking to make him THE final addition to the rotation. I think the Cubs would otherwise still be looking at starting pitchers (even guys outside Roki Sasaki) who could slot more definitively into the rotation.
I’m also not sure I’d look at it as the Cubs adding THE final lefty for the bullpen group. He could wind up being that guy, but I don’t see it as being conceived of as so black and white. This front office has talked about just having enough arms to cover all the innings of a season, and Craig Counsell has echoed the same. Sometimes you just add available arms that you like, and you figure out usage later.
Relatedly, I have to mention it, since I think about it often and it feels like it could play here: are the Cubs ever going to seriously consider a six-man rotation? I know they have danced around the topic before, particularly after the Shōta Imanaga addition. In Japan, pitchers are part of a six-man rotation, and each pitch once per week, generally going deeper into games each time. You couldn’t exactly replicate that in MLB, nor would that necessarily be the most effective deployment of your pitchers. But the Cubs did try to give Imanaga extra rest last year when they could, and the data throughout baseball history is crystal clear that starters tend to pitch better on more rest. So, yeah, I think about a six-man rotation – or a modified version, where you’re adjusting on the fly constantly and looking at match-ups plus rest – when I’m looking at a club that is going to have so many “starting-capable” pitchers on the 13-man staff. A guy like Ogasawara, whatever label he gets for his role, would also fit into that kind of thinking.