“You know, pitch-grade evaluation, as far as using data to assess pitches, is so different than when we were going through the same process with Dice-K,” Cherington said. “We were going through reports based on subjective scouting reports, and as much due diligence on character as we possibly could. Sure, we’re looking at performance, but it’s pretty top-level … like just, what were the raw results? A lot of the stuff that’s under the hood and available today just wasn’t available then. So it
is a different ballgame.”
Speaking of a different ballgame: NPB varies from MLB in many ways. The power isn’t the same; only 13 of 144 qualified batters hit 20 or more homers last year, while 77 out of 133 qualified batters in MLB hit that benchmark. The overall talent base in NPB is lower, though it’s probably the best league outside of North America. And the ball they use is different, as they pitch with a pre-tacked ball that can help both command and spin. The best guess, by our levels, is that it’s something like a Quadruple-A league.
The good news for our purposes is that Yamamoto pitched in MLB parks during the World Baseball Classic. Rawlings made the ball for that tournament, and it didn’t have the tackiness that the NPB ball does. Also, those parks were fitted with Hawk-Eye,
a camera-based tracking system, so we have pitch-level movement and velocity data for Yamamoto — the same data that feeds public data like
Stuff+, as well as the private pitch-grade evaluators that teams have.
Let’s use that data to look at each of Yamamoto’s dimensions and find who he compares closest to in MLB right now.
Topping out at 99 mph, Yamamoto’s four-seam fastball sat 95 in a 52-pitch WBC appearance and had great ride from a lower release point, something that teams in America have been looking for recently.