Fujinami shines in bullpen session
Japanese pitcher is ‘as advertised’
MESA, Ariz. — The audience for Shintaro Fujinami’s first bullpen session of Oakland Athletics spring camp Thursday reflected both evaluation and curiosity.
It included, naturally, A’s front-office personnel, pitching coaches and manager Mark Kotsay, all of whom will play a role in gauging the Japanese right-hander’s readiness to join the rotation. Between running drills on an adjacent field, position coaches Mike Aldrete and Eric Martins joined the gaggle, and from a grassy berm some ways away, about a dozen Japanese media members watched as well.
On an A’s spring roster with plenty of new players, Fujinami, 28, offers particular intrigue as he navigates the transition from Japan to MLB. The hard-throwing starter has six weeks to adjust to new surroundings, on and off the field, with Thursday marking a step as Kotsay, general manager David Forst and others saw him throw from a mound in person for the first time.
Fujinami threw 40 pitches from an array that A’s pitching coach Scott Emerson said includes three types of fastballs, a splitter and a slider. Fujinami, who signed a one-year, $3.25 million deal with Oakland this offseason, reportedly averaged high-90s mph with his fastball and low-90s on the splitter in Japan. No radar-gun readings were visible Thursday, but Kotsay said he thought Fujinami “comes as advertised in terms of stuff.”
“You watch him throw his fastball, he’s got good intent. It moves, he can cut it, he can sink it,” Emerson said. “He’s got a good split at the bottom of the zone. He can throw the fourseam riding fastball. So, all the intangibles he has right now. It’s just how we’re going to put him in a game and see what he can do to face major-league hitters.”
Fujinami worked in two sets of 20 pitches. In between, Kotsay chatted with him through interpreter Issei Kamada, as did catcher Shea Langeliers. Baseball in hand, Fujinami demonstrated a few of his pitch grips and their action off his fingers to Langeliers, who was receiving them for the first time.
“He’s got different variations of multiple pitches,” said Langeliers, Oakland’s new primary catcher after the trade of Sean Murphy. “Speaking to him about where he likes his targets, and the more I catch him, the more comfortable we’ll get.”
Asked if any of Fujinami’s pitches stood out, Langeliers nodded: “The big splitter was nasty. It’s going to take some catching to get used to that one. It dives down.”
Fujinami’s stuff was evident in Nippon Professional Baseball, in which he compiled a 57-54 record and 3.41 ERA in 10 seasons with the Hanshin Tigers’ major-league club. But the 6-foot-6 right-hander also dealt with command issues during his NPB tenure that led to stints in the Tigers’ bullpen and minorleague club. He appeared to address them in 2022, totaling 65 strikeouts and 21 walks in 66-2/3 innings for Hanshin. One challenge this spring will be to sustain that progress while changing leagues. MLB uses a different baseball — larger and said to be slicker — than the NPB ball. The pitcher’s mound itself is also said to be softer in Japan, a difference that new Mets right-hander Kodai Senga, who also is moving from NPB to MLB this spring, has said is affecting his mechanics.
Fujinami, through Kamada, said he expected the MLB baseball to be “more slippery. But at this point, I feel OK. And I feel like I can (create) more movement on the ball. I feel the seams are lower but wider.”
After Thursday’s bullpen, Fujinami said he feels “really good on the splitters right now. I want to work on the cutters up in the zone, the sweeper and also two-seamers.” One change he already has noticed in an MLB camp is the structure of daily work.
“In Japan, I feel like it’s a lot more team activities: team stretch, team throws, team defense,” he said. “Here, you can focus on what you want to work on. But at the same time, I feel more responsibility on myself. I have to be in charge of myself.”
The A’s, of course, will help guide Fujinami’s spring build-up. Fujinami said he could have thrown more pitches Thursday, but it’s early in camp. Emerson said Fujinami likely will throw three more bullpen sessions and one live batting practice before his first Cactus League outing.
Workload will be a season-long consideration for Fujinami. He averaged about 155 innings over his first six NPB seasons (majors and minors) but about 93 innings the past four seasons. Kotsay said Thursday it is too early to set an innings target for him. Fujinami, asked what he thinks is realistic, estimated in the 140-inning range but also pointed to MLB’s threshold for qualified pitchers, typically 162 innings.
“If I could throw that number of innings,” he said, “I would be really happy.”