if we are going to compete with the mariner and yank for him we will be in deep it.  even if they gave Jim the money, we would have to concoct some reason that he should want to come.  A losing tradition and much larger Asian cultures in Seattle and New York make this pretty doubtful for me.  

...Matsuzaka before but never seen footage of his FILTHY "gyroball".

 So the split finger fastball is the last pitch to be invented? What about Kerry Wood's "slurve"?

 

I just don't see the Cubs doing what it takes to land this guy. The Cubs always seem to pass when it comes to talented Japanese players, instead choosing to rely upon their fractured farm system. If anything, TribCo and their shriveling bottom line would put the kibosh on any big money deals.

Even when they had Nomo in AAA for an audition ('99 I think?), they still took a pass on him. Worse yet, he got picked up by someone else (Milwaukee?) and had several quality starts that year. IIRC, I think pitching was a problem that year. (will be out of the office - will check back later)

but decided it'd be better to do that in another month.

What are Dusty's chances to return? A few weeks ago, I would have thought they were nil...but I just don't know what's going through Jim's head right now.

Would a solid finish gain him another chance? While i don't think it should, Jim might be lured into a false security if the Cubs finish strong. So what are the chances anyone?

I'm guessing Dusty has about a 30% chance of coming back. Man, I'm hoping for some new blood...

 Isn't Bobby Valentine the manager of the Seibu Lions? He totally changed my mind of him when he managed the Mets. I would LOVE it if they signed Bobby V to replace Dusty, especially if it helps sign this guy.

  Bobby V was interested in the Cub job before  they signed Dusty. He'd be more of a kick in the ass, which the team needs and he's more than media savy. He also has the "Season is a marathon "  mentality and knows how to handle pitchers, bullpen, bench players and all that.

   I think it would be a great hire. and if it helped us in anyway get the pitcher then it's superb.

The majority of angst should be directed @ those above hendry.  

Can anyone find his World Baseball Classic stats?

have displayed a strong penchant for playing on the West Coast or for either the two New York teams.  The White Sox have been the only team successful in breaking that pattern with their signing of Shinjo Takatsu and the mega-underrated Tadihito Iguchi.  

Does it have something to do with their being a much larger proportion of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast?  Does it have something to do with the attraction of the Yankees and Mets playing in the Big Apple?  Does it have something to do with the player agents the Japanese imports use?  Don't know the answer.  

Everything being said, I wouldn't think the Cubs stand the greatest chance to land Matsuzaka.  And it has never been the style of the Cubs to get into extreme bidding wars.  You can bet the farm that the Yankees, Mets and Dodgers will go hot and heavy after Matsuzaka.  

about asking Hendry to sign someone playing in Japan. He'll bring Macias back.

then Hendry will really take an interest in signing him!

researching Japanese "yakyu" and there are a few things about Daisuke Matsuzaka that I don't think people are aware of. Firstly he wanted to be posted at the beginning of the season after the WBC and Seibu wouldn't do it(there was a sort of a handshake agreement that if he had an impressive 2005 season Seibu would consider doing it), Matsuzaka felt very hurt by this and betrayed to an extent and publically said in Japan that he will forgo his personal lobbying towards being posted until the end of next season when he becomes a FA so he might not be posted this offseason. Most experts seem to think he'll be in Japan in 2007. Secondly, he is a huge risk.....there is alot of mileage on that arm of his and there have been reports of a drop in velocity in his fastball from what I read it wasn't a drop of a few MPH but rather somewhere in the range of 5-7 MPH. I'm unsure whether or not he's gained it back. All of this brings up some concerns about his durability and shifting from the 6 man rotation used in Japan to the 5 man used in MLB.

Hendry's tenure has been marked by poor judgement, bad decision making and lost opportunities.

So if this guy really is the real deal, he will probably wind up somewhere else.

don't see the Tribune Co. doing whatever it takes to get Matsuzaka. Of course for a company in financial trouble it would be a very smart business move to open some revenue streams into the Japanese market seeing as how for one.....in the case of almost every major Japanese star that's come to MLB, the team that acquired said player gained a huge chunk of the Japanese market because the Japanese despite team loyalty will watch games featuring Japan's best players so in reality when an MLB team signs a Japanese player its as if they've added another 5-10 million fans and the money that those fans will spend on merchandise, sattelite tv, etc.

Get that Japanese play-by-play guy to replace Len instead!

The locks -- Carlos Zambrano

The humongoloid question mark -- Mark Prior

The kids -- Sean Marshall, Carlos Marmol

The maybes -- Rich Hill

The free agent signings -- Jeff Suppan (or reasonable facsimile)  

Put his name on the back of Cubs shirts.... Hats... Lobby to get him....

If you build it, he will come....

thing to Tokyo in terms of pace/lifestyle.

But at mlbtraderumors.com they said that it was reportedly the Astros that had the rights for a trade with A. Jones.

No not Bruce Lee, but D Lee's father?  I know he scouted the Pacfifc and played a huge role in finding H. Choi. I wonder alond if there is any pull from there?

Sadly though your reason seems sound the Cubs will watch while others make some "out-of-the-box" moves.

I'd be cool if the Cubs fronted alot of money now  won the posting and flipped him to another team for more cash or a top player or two...A Rod?

Just thinking.

is now member of the Arizona Diamondbacks.  Say what you will about Livian, but the guy has a rubber arm and provides a team with tons of quality starts.  Is the National League that pathetic that the D'Backs still consider themselves in the playoff race?  Answer is yes.  

Matsuzaka's agent. If Hendry was a smart GM he should have had a long talk with Boras last week when he was letting him search for a trade that suited Maddux, he should have struck a deal with Boras saying that in exchange for letting Boras do Hendry's job.....the Cubs get first crack at Matsuzaka.

i don't understand the posting system. say he gets posted by seibu, and we give them 20 or 30 million. All that money goes to the team, and none to the pitcher, right?
Then we have to sign him to a deal. However, he will only have one team to negotiate with. So what is his bargaining power to get a big contract? one's he's been posted and money changed hands, isn't he then under the team's control, much like a drafted player would be? would he get the minimum until he is arbitration eligible, or is it different for foreign players.

also, fwiw, if those radar numbers are accurate, he was throwing his fastball in the 90-92 range in the 79-83 range. seemed like he had nice movement on his curve but not much movement on the fastball. sounds like rich hill to me, but who knows. maybe he has a couple more pitches that i missed.

hey Al, do you think for your next vineline blurb you could mention this pitcher and how you were all talking about how great it would be if the cubs got him. i'm being serious.
they probably were a little specific in what you could/couldn't include, but maybe its worth a shot./

including Matsuzaka aren't on a 5 day rotation schedule. Usually it's 7 or 8 days between starts. I just wonder how that would translate into our 5 day starting rotation.

throw a towel? Until the Cubs can confirm his ability to throw a white towel this is all just crazy speculation.

During the rain delay in the D-Backs series, Len & Bob did a couple interviews. One of those was with "The special assistant to the GM" (can't remember his name)for the Cubs. At the end of the inteview he discussed that he was leaving for Japan the following day to scout players for 2 weeks. There was no mention of D.Matsuzaka,but that doesn't mean he wasn't going be scouted by the Cubs,either.

they will save on Wood, no Maddux money, Boy you would hope they would go deep to get this guy, I don't care what league he is pitching in, the guy can throw. I like the idea of a petition.

Rich Hill, I don't think so, I like him to a healthy Bartolo Colon. And I would take that.

Would his windup be legal in the US? It seems to me like he stops his motion toward home plate, and that would be a balk.

regarding windup delivery: "From this position any natural movement associated with his delivery of the ball to the batter commits him to the pitch without interruption or alteration"

Most umpires interpret this to say that a hesitation or pause in the windup is okay as long as the pitcher does it on a fairly consitent basis and so long as the intent is not to "catch the batter off-guard" as stated in the rule book.  Luis Tiant and others pushed the envelope as far as not having a consistent delivery, but the umpires have determined that if a hurky-jerky motion or hesitation is part of a pitcher's normal repertoire, than it will be allowed.

My point was only that it is indeed possible to balk from a windup delivery, although it is somewhat unusual.

Anyone know who's scheduled to pitch this weekend?  With the off day, the ESPN schedule wasn't very useful.  I'll be at the games Saturday and Sunday, and unfortunately it looks like I miss Z.

Is Steve Ontiveros still playing in Japan? Maybe he's available.

I just did a little research and found out that Steve Ontiveros was released mid-season by the 1980 Cubs. He was hitting .208 at the time. Imagine how bad you had to be to be released by that team. That was one of the worst Cub teams of all time.

TOOK TWO YEARS "Jazzman".

If you remember, Maggs was hurt virtually ALL of '05, and Pudge's offensive numbers were bad - .276 avg, 14 HR and a .290 OBP - worse than Izturis!

So,they weren't the best "value" for the Tigers - and the team sucked.

This year is a different story of course!

Watching the Tigers play the Cubs it was easy to see just how far the Cubs are from playing to a high level as a team.

Don't believe the Latest TEASE scam by the sCubs playing well 90 days after the season started. I've seen this movie before.

I've watched Matsuzaka at least 10 times over the last two years, back when Seibu broadcasted all of their home games, a couple this season and two of the WBC. No, there's not a pitch he throws that's a gyro or something like that.

He throws a fourseam fastball in the 90-94 MPH range, topping out at 100 at the Athens Olympics, the fastest I've seen him throw on a TV gun was 159 KPH a year ago, that's 98.8 MPH. To compliment it he has a forkball, curveball, slider and an occasional two seam fastball. The first three are above average offerings. His slider runs in 80-82 and his best and most used offspeed pitch. It's a very good slider. His curveball is thrown in the high 70s with very good movement. It's a very, very good pitch that he doesn't use often, unless it's to a lefty because his slider is much more efficient against righties. His forkball is like a change up with good downward action. He throws it in the low 70s, and it's actually a very good fourth pitch. He doesn't use it more than three or four times a start because he really doesn't need it and it's a popular pitch in Japan. I could seem him using it a lot and having a lot of success with it because it's not used with regularity in the states. He really made some of the Mexican and Cuban hitters look bad with it in the WBC. I remember a couple of the American players in the 2004 Japan/US All Star series hating that pitch in particular. His two seam is a very new pitch. With the balls that they use in Japan, it's very hard to get movement on it using the seams. They're really low seams, one of the reasons the forkball has become the staple of the league. It's also the reason a lot of Japanese pitchers lost consistency on the breaking pitches in the WBC but it actually gave them better movement on their pitches. Matsuzaka started working on his two seam last off season for the purpose of throwing it in the WBC and America when he comes here. It's a work in progress and I haven't seen him enough this season to really comment on it. Early reports were that he used it to baffle Japanese hitters in the preseason. He apparently used it a lot in the opening round of the WBC, but I can't verify that.

His slider, fastball and curve combination probably reminded you of Mark Prior, which he does a lot in his pitching. He's not a trickster, he'll throw 150 pitches a game with 100 of them being fourseam fastballs. He lives off his  fastball and has impeccable command on it (vintage Prior). His command on his offspeed pitches are not as crisp, but rate as solid across the board. He's also a gamer who loves to compete and go balls out. He's had his share of injuries in the past, but he's fine now and the only concern there could be the high pith counts he has sustained in Japan, although the concerns IMO are overblown, he usually pitches with five days of rest each time out, not four.

For what it's worth on his drop in velocity:

Against Mexico his fastball ranged from 87-94 sitting 91-93, with over 80 percent of them at 91-93, actual breakdown I ran in March:

Fastball: 51 overall
87 MPH: 2 (3.9%)
88 MPH: 0 (0.0%)
89 MPH: 2 (3.9%)
90 MPH: 4 (7.8%)
91 MPH: 10 (19.6%)
92 MPH: 16 (31.4%)
93 MPH: 15 (29.4%)
94 MPH: 2 (3.9%)
Average: 91.7 MPH
Balls: 17 (33%)
Strikes: 34 (67%)
Swings at strikes: 26 (76%)
Misses: 8 (31%)
Foul: 9 (35%)
In play: 9 (35%)

Against Cuba he sat 92-96 with most of his pitches sitting at 94 or higher, actual breakdown:
Fastballs: 37
92 MPH: 6 (16.2%)
93 MPH: 9 (24.3%)
94 MPH: 17 (45.8%)
95 MPH: 3 (8.1%)
96 MPH: 2 (5.4%)
Average: 93.6 MPH
Strikes: 27 (73.0%)
Balls: 10 (27.0%)
Swings at Strikes: 22 (81.5%)
Misses: 8 (36.4%)
Foul: 8 (36.4%)
In Play: 6 (27.3%)