Source: http://ift.tt/1kZRmwU --- Sunday, December 03, 2017
Unless you have your head under a rock, you have heard about the posting agreement between Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball that permits teams to commence the Shohei Otani sweepstakes. The agreement is what allows the 30 MLB clubs to bid for the services of the 23-year-old heralded as Japanese Babe Ruth , and a contract between Ohtani and a Major League club to be determined will come within the next three weeks. The entire point of this agreement, which was delayed and the voted upon again, was for Ohtani — the 2016 NPB Pacific League MVP with the Nippon Ham Fighters — to come stateside and bring his power hitting and 101 MPH fastball to North America. But lost in the noise is another, completely different Japanese pitcher who appears worthy of an MLB deal: Kazuhisa Makita . Makita is a 33-year-old reliever with crazy movement on a borderline insane pitching delivery. He posted an earned runs average of 2.59 in 62.2 innings of work in 2017, following up his career-best 2016 campaign during which Makita went 7-1 with a 1.72 ERA in 78.2 innings pitched. For some of the more depleted bullpens in the big leagues, taking a chance on a righty like Makita would not be insane. Kazuhisa Makita and, for example, Ohtani, are polar opposites. Ohtani throws “shoulder up” like a conventional North American pitcher and compiles strikeouts with blazing velocity, but Makita is a submarine hurler whose specialty is deceptio ...
from Baseball http://ift.tt/2zIkQKT
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