Japan: where even the LOOGY relievers have four pitches. The Sox yesterday added another potentially blockbuster arm to their pen by signing 30-year-old Hideki Okajima, a lefty reliever with an eleven-year, 494-game career in Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan to a two year contract with a 2009 club option. There are three things of interest about Boston’s newest acquisition:
- Like Matsuzaka (whose nickname on this site, I have determined, will be Dice Clay, just as soon as his agent stops being an ass and lets him sign. Think of it like a signing bonus), Okajima has never pitched in the US. However, this signing doesn’t seem to be a case of, as DC put it, the Sox inviting Enrique Wilson to Spring Training to keep Manny happy, as Okajima seems to have something to offer on his own, Daisuke-bait or not; something like…
- Four pitches. Yes, four. A wicked curve, a fastball to set things up and two splitters – a strike pitch and kill pitch. Forget LOOGY, Okajima could be one of the most versatile lefty relievers we’ve seen in a while. I’m just waiting for Timlin to invite him to go bear hunting.
- After a ten-year career with the Yomiuri Giants, Okajima spent 2006 with the team with the best name ever invented: the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters. True fact: the Ham Fighters are also the name of a group of vigilantes patrolling Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn for a band of insurgents known only as the Un-Kosher Kommandos (this may not actually be true).
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