Saturday, September 17, 2011

Japanese Players don't Always work out: Tsuyoshi Nishioka

The Minnesota Twins have announced that they are shutting down middle infielder Tsuyoshi Nishioka for the rest of the season due to injury. Over the offseason, the Japanese player came over for a 3 year, 9.25 million dollar deal. He has rewarded the Twins with a -1.8 WAR, a .278 OBP, 0 homers, and a .527 OPS. His WASP?  11716. As bad as his offensive numbers are, his defensive numbers are worse (-1.4 WAR defensively, -.4 WAR offensively) with a miserable .961 fielding percentage. When discussing why the Twins were bad this year, the obvious reasons getting nothing from their two top sluggers in Mauer and Morneau, but Nishioka doing nothing didn't help either. And perhaps this is a reminder to teams looking at Japanese pitching phenom Yu Darvish, yes some Japanese players have come over and played great, but there have also been a few that have really really scuffled.

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