The Oakland Athletics have reached an agreement on a one-year deal with right-hander Shintaro Fujinami, according to ESPN's Jeff Passan. Fujinami was submitted to Major League Baseball's "posting system" back in December by the Hanshin Tigers of Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball league.
Fujinami, 28, was once considered a rival to Los Angeles Angels two-way phenom Shohei Ohtani. Alas, fate has not afforded him a career honeycombed with glory like it has with Ohtani. Fujinami has instead encountered some turbulence en route to a career 3.17 ERA, mostly in the form of sporadic control. To wit, his career walk rate exceeds four per nine innings.
The evaluators who spoke to CBS Sports about Fujinami in December expected him to serve as a reliever in the majors on the strength of his mid-90s fastball and splitter. Passan, however, has Fujinami cracking the A's rotation. Given the dismal state of Oakland's roster, you could think of that arrangement as a win-win situation: either he exceeds expectations and makes himself into a compelling trade candidate, or he doesn't and he helps the draft lottery odds.
Here's what Sports Info Solutions wrote about Fujinami prior to his posting:
The splitter was his best strikeout pitch, and his most-used pitch with two strikes, narrowly edging out his fastball in both two-strike usage and strikeouts. In addition to having a solid 34% whiff rate, batters also struggled to do anything with the splitter when it was put in play. His splitters turned into grounders 66% of the time, and batters only managed a 9% hard hit rate versus the pitch.
Fujinami is the latest in a line of modest free-agent additions the Athletics have made this winter, joining a collection that includes infielders Jace Peterson and Aledmys Díaz and right-handers Drew Rucinski and Trevor May. The A's also obtained backstop Manny Piña and outfielder Esteury Ruiz through trades.
