One free agent pitcher meets many of the Orioles' preferences for pitch types and movement profiles: Kodai Senga
Senga, a Japanese free agent, will command a significant contract this winter. Considering how neatly his traits match what the Orioles pursue, might he be on their list?
This space has pretty consistently held since the end of the season that this is a winter where the Orioles need to be active to improve their major league roster in a meaningful way this winter, not because they’re not good enough, but because they’re now good enough to warrant those kinds of upgrades to get to the next level.
Whether it’s by spending on a top-tier free agent pitcher or trading from their deep and diverse prospect base to upgrade the rotation that way, I think it’s a no-brainer, even if I understand all the reasons why they’d keep the organic growth they’ve achieved intact and see if that can carry them further.
But in the last week or so, I’ve grown fascinated by another way to spend the Orioles’ money, and if that money is actually available to the Orioles this winter is not my concern, so I can spend it more freely than anyone.
Japanese pitcher Kodai Senga is an attractive free agent option for a lot of reasons for a lot of teams. But everything about his profile and his pitch mix seem ideally suited for what the Orioles like in pitchers, and might check all the boxes required for the Orioles to make the multi-year, big-money investment such talents require.
That’s not necessarily unique to the Orioles, of course. Search Senga’s name and there are outlets of all kinds outlining why a certain team would be a good fit for him. I assume most of them say that he’s good, and that said team needs a starter. (I didn’t read any of them, though my old pal Jordan Schusterman has some smart background on Senga here.)
It goes deeper than that for the Orioles, and it comes down to Senga’s profile . This video from Lance Brozdowski is a really good breakdown of Senga’s stuff and, by extension, the attractive parts to the Orioles.
Everything on the mound works off a fastball, and Senga’s being in the mid-90s is certainly a plus in his box. But the natural hop and ride on the pitch are hallmarks to many pitching programs now, including the Orioles’, and Senga comes with that naturally.
It seems like the pitch wasn’t a bat-misser at the level a mid-90s fastball with that kind of life might be otherwise, and some reports have that down to some command inconsistencies that may stem from his delivery. That, too, seems like an issue that the Orioles’ pitching program with its pitching lab and pursuit of consistent top-level movement profiles on pitches can help address.
The rest of his arsenal reads like a wish list for the Orioles when it comes to the stuff profile of the pitchers they want to develop. His splitter, nicknamed the “Ghost Fork” for how it disappears, is a devastating swing-and-miss pitch that Brozdowski points out yielded a higher percentage of whiffs against Japanese hitters last season than Felix Bautista’s did against major league hitters, which is saying something. The splitter is a difficult pitch to master, but to some in the Orioles’ organization, it’s an ideal secondary pitch because it plays well to both left- and right-handed hitters.
The developmental philosophy is that pitchers need at least one weapon that’s considered an out pitch for hitters on both sides of the plate. Because of the sharp vertical break of a splitter, especially when played off a hoppy fastball that stays up in the zone, the splitter can count as a weapon to both sides.
Add in Senga’s pair of breaking balls — his cutter and his slider — and that’s another tick in his favor on the Orioles’ pitching checklist. Right-on-right sliders are particularly effective, especially if there’s sweep to them, and cutters can run in effectively to lefties on the hands. Several promising Orioles prospects utilize both, and the ability to spin the ball in multiple ways bodes well for the aptitude to further add pitches.
It’s certainly different to commit tens of millions of dollars for those traits for an international free agent as opposed to using a third-day draft pick on them and hoping they develop, but it seems Senga is interested in developing even into his 30s as one of the reported preferences he’s shown is for a team that’s steeped in analytics.
We’re a long way from the shock of learning Matt Harvey signed with the Orioles because of how they utilize data a few springs ago, and whether it’s cleaning up his delivery for more consistent command and top-level spin on his pitches or better attack plans to help his existing stuff play up, the Orioles can provide that. His signing would go a long way to satisfying the win-now aspect of his wish list, and there’s nothing the Orioles can do about their market size.
Truthfully, they wear their small-market status as a badge of pride, and cite it often in justifying the development-centric approach they’ve taken to returning to contention. Now that they’re on the precipice of it, it will be hard to justify not doing anything to enhance that, even if they believe they can make a fully homegrown team good enough to win based on the quality of the players and coaches in the organization.
There are plenty of ways to go about that improvement this year, all worth considering, and all that require payroll to increase significantly. Thankfully, MLB teams are each getting a $30 million payment from Disney to complete the incremental purchase of BAMTech, according to SportBusiness, so unless the Orioles are coming out of their lean years still unable to operate with a profit then the hope is that will go toward the baseball team.
With myriad options as to how to spend all the money that the Orioles should be putting back onto the field, it’s easy to debate which is the best one. When one of them, such as Senga, so neatly fits into what they’re looking for, it shoots near the top of my list.
Love Senga and hope they do try and sign him! I wonder if the Orioles are also looking at Masataka Yoshida for the outfield?