The Athletics agreed to a one-year contract with right-hander Shintaro Fujinami, reports ESPN’s Jeff Passan (Twitter link). The hard-throwing 28-year-old was posted by the Hanshin Tigers of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball back on Dec. 1. His agreement is pending a physical, and the A’s expect to use him out of the rotation, Passan adds. MLB.com’s Jon Morosi reported not much prior to Passan that the A’s were in ongoing talks with Fujinami’s camp and considered a finalist to sign the righty.
Fujinami was a high school phenom from the same draft class as Shohei Ohtani, incredibly stepping right from high school ball into the Tigers rotation. As a 19-year-old rookie he pitched to a 2.75 ERA in 137 2/3 innings as a starter. For several years, he delivered standout results, pitching to a sub-3.00 ERA through his first four seasons as a professional and making the Central League All-Star team in each of those first four campaigns.
However, as Yakyu Cosmopolitan lays out in a video recap of Fujinami’s career that fans will want to check out (YouTube link, video in English), Fujinami was left on the mound to toss 161 pitches — far and away a career high — during his age-22 season in an outing that began with him yielding five runs in three innings. He’d already begun to display some worrying command issues prior to that outing. The extent to which that outing might have impacted him can’t be known, but Fujinami began to oscillate between the Tigers’ first team (i.e. their major league club) and their farm system beginning in 2017. Further struggles from 2017-21 caused his stock to fade substantially.
The 2022 season, though, brought about something of a renaissance for Fujinami. The hard-throwing righty made 10 starts and six relief appearances with the Tigers’ top team, pitching to a 3.38 ERA in 66 2/3 innings. He fanned 23.6% of his opponents and, most crucially, turned in a career-low 7.6% walk rate. That was not only the best mark of Fujinami’s career, but the first time since 2016 he’s posted a walk rate under 10%.
As a 6-foot-6 righty with an upper-90s heater that has reached triple digits and a slider that’s been a plus pitch in the past, Fujinami offers tantalizing potential. The recent struggles and repeated inability to locate the ball with any real consistency obviously limit his earning power, but big league scouts have had Fujinami on their radars since his high school days. The A’s make for a sensible team to roll the dice on catching lightning in a bottle with Fujinami’s impressive raw arsenal given their spacious home park and status as a non-contender, which will afford them additional patience if the righty struggles to acclimate to North American ball early on.
With the A’s, Fujinami will step into a starting staff that includes Cole Irvin, Paul Blackburn and a host of fellow unproven options. Oakland signed journeyman right-hander Drew Rucinski to a one-year, $3M deal on the heels of a terrific run in the Korea Baseball Organization, so that pair seems likely to slot in behind Irvin and Blackburn. Candidates for the fifth spot on the staff will include out-of-options righty James Kaprielian and prospects Ken Waldichuk, Kyle Muller, JP Sears and Adrian Martinez. It’s at least possible the A’s will use a six-man group early in the season, though their exact plans will be hashed out both by health and performance of the group during spring training.
The NPB/MLB posting system allows a posted player to negotiate with all 30 MLB clubs; the player’s former team is subsequently entitled to a posting/release fee that’s equal to 20% of the first $25M on a contract, 17.5% of the next $25M and 15% of any dollars thereafter. Given that it’s a one-year deal, the A’s will simply be on the hook for a release fee that’s 20% of whatever amount is guaranteed to Fujinami. That fee will be paid to the team and is separate from the value of the contract paid to Fujinami himself.
