The San Diego Padres wasted no time making their first move of the offseason. Pitcher Tatsuya Nogami signed a minor-league deal out of Osaka Sangyo University, bypassing Nippon Professional Baseball. It’s an emerging trend among Japanese players to bypass NPB by signing out of the collegiate level. Whether it continues is another question entirely. NPB could certainly step in and put a stop to it, but they haven’t just yet.
Regardless, San Diego has an intriguing new prospect. Not much is known about Nogami. By “not much” I mean next to nothing. Nogami has almost zero public stats available. What is known is that he played baseball in high school before attending OSU. He decided not to play for the university team in his first year, instead joining them in his second year.
Crunching the Numbers
There are no stats available for that second year, but there are some for his most recent season. This spring, OSU won the league championship in the Seito Six University Semi-Hardball Baseball League with an undefeated record. Much of that was due to Nogami’s work on the mound. In six games of work (25.1 IP), Nogami allowed just one earned run for a 0.36 ERA.
The 20-year-old’s most intriguing ability is his strikeout rate. In 25 1/3 innings pitched this season, Nogami struck out 54 batters. That is not a typo. The number resulted in a blistering 19.18 K/9 rate. He threw up to 90 mph in high school but hasn’t had any public measurements available while in university. It’s safe to say his velocity has increased a little since then. His pitch mix has obviously kept hitters guessing, with a four-seamer, slider, cutter, curveball and splitter.
Differences in Semi-Hardball
The big question is how Nogami will adjust to MLB. That’s not just because he’s coming over from Japan, it’s because he’s been pitching in a semi-hardball league instead of baseball. Semi-hardball isn’t that much different from baseball. The way that the ball moves for pitchers is incredibly similar. The bigger difference is for hitters, with batters not being able to hit the ball as hard.
Because Nogami is a strikeout pitcher (in every definition of the term), the change shouldn’t affect his stuff all that much. It might be a bigger problem if he was a groundball pitcher, but that shouldn’t change too much for the 20-year-old in his transition to professional baseball in America.
Immediate Expectations
Nogami is certain to begin the coming season in the minor leagues. Not only is he incredibly young, but he also would benefit from gaining some experience facing higher-caliber hitters. A more intriguing question is whether Nogami will be issued a non-roster invite to Spring Training. It could be valuable to see him face big-league hitters. If his stuff plays well against them in a small sample, that could push his timeline forward.