Ken Takahashi

by Sam Page on May 3, 2009 3:50 PM EDT

Ken Takahashi debuted for the Mets yesterday, pitching 2.2 innings of scoreless relief from the top of a Titanic life-raft, ultimately letting the Mets back into the game. Now it seems Takahashi's successful debut may have earned him at least a spot start, with Oliver Perez's job up-for-grabs. So who is Ken Takahashi?

Takahashi recently turned forty, spending the entirety of his fourteen-year career in Japan with the Hiroshima Toyo Carp. He was reliever who converted to starting in 2001. Mildly successful as starter, he followed Carp-teammate Hiroki Kuroda to American, hoping to score a relief gig. While his numbers from Japan aren't particularly impressive, it's worth noting Kuroda only had a 6.17 K/9 his final year in Japan. That said, Kuroda demonstrated much better control.

Takahashi supposedly throws a curve, fastball, circle change, slider, and sinker, and all those pitches were on display yesterday:

His fastball sat in the 86-89 range and 13 of the 21 hit the zone. His curve looks like the most useful breaking ball, but we'll have a better idea of that when he throws more. Like most soft-tossing pitchers, his relative success will depend on how effectively mixes and controls his assortment of pitches. There's some deception to his delivery, so he may be surprisingly effective for a while. Entrusting him with anything more than this one start and long-man duty, however, is a bad idea.

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I agree

Once the league gets video of him, I don’t think he’ll be able to get by with his stuff, but a spot start against a lefty heavy team seems like it can work out well. Besides he dosen’t have to pitch that well to be an upgrade over Perez. That said, Joe Buck loves this man, he couldn’t stop gushing about him, Cora as well who “had a huge impact on the game.”.

by Sokojoe on May 3, 2009 4:05 PM EDT reply actions

A 65 pitch limit spot starter whose played in one big league game?

Count me out on that one, especially the way the bullpen has been (over)used. I’d much prefer Niese or Figgy. And I’m a Tak fan, I just don’t think this is the best way to proceed from here. I think his deception could make him effective in the short term, but its really the pitch limit that urks me.

I know the SNY/WFAN blowhards would freak if Niese got called up with his 6.55 ERA, but he’s really pitched better than that. His last outing was solid, and before that he pitched three great innings in his two previous outings before getting let down by his defense in the fourth. Fangraphs has his current FIP at 2.88, and statcorner has his tRA at 3.29. His ERA problems seem to largely stem from an unusually high BABIP (.400) and unusually low strand rate (50.5%), both of which will find their way towards the mean.

All of a sudden Ollie has a bum knee now huh? DL would be good, get him off the field and into the trainers room, let him build his stamina back up in the minors and hopefully regain some velo. Its easier to take an 80 mph breaking ball in the dirt when you’re only protecting against a 88 mph fastball. Ollie’s command will never be great, unless he finds some Al Leiter magic, but he just can’t be successful unless he’s throwing hard(ish).

by Mark Himmelstein on May 3, 2009 4:08 PM EDT reply actions

After we offered Castillo for Vazquez

I decided our front office has no grasp on DIPS theory. Hopefully I’m wrong, I want Niese.

King of the bling come to lay down the evidence//Not George Bush, L-Millz be da president

by Sam Page on May 3, 2009 4:14 PM EDT up reply actions

Ollie to AAA and Niese to the big club

seems to make the most sense. But now it looks like Ollie to the pen, so nevermind.

by James Kannengieser on May 3, 2009 5:16 PM EDT up reply actions

ugh

by Gina on May 3, 2009 5:38 PM EDT up reply actions

Why is our front office and management so inept?

Someone explain to me what every other normal person could not.

"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw

by squid92 on May 3, 2009 5:47 PM EDT up reply actions

The culture has changed

There are enough Billy Beanes and Theo Epsteins in front offices at this point that they’re just outclassing the “old school guys”. Its not just the Red Sox and their superior risk management anymore. You have teams like the Mariners methodically improving their defense and its done wonders for their pitching. The Mets problem is that they don’t have anyone like that, anyone who can look at the newer metrics and concepts and really judge which ones are viable and how to apply them to the team.

I must admit, I try to bear with the management of this team, but its becoming increasingly difficult. There was all that noise about Tony Bernazard’s vendetta against Willie, and its becoming harder and harder to feel like he’s done a good job handling big prospects. Omar Minaya’s favorite talking point all offseason was that people at Mama’s of Corona would tell him the bullpen sucks while waiting for their sandwiches. Ya think? Did you ever meet a guy named Scotty there? And while I love Jerry’s sense of humor and psuedo-philosophical persona, I’m already getting tired of his odd substitutions and favoritism.

by Mark Himmelstein on May 3, 2009 6:24 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs

I feel like there's been reports that the mets do have guys like that

Just that Omar is the guy pulling the trigger.

by Gina on May 3, 2009 7:39 PM EDT up reply actions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bbaumer

King of the bling come to lay down the evidence//Not George Bush, L-Millz be da president

by Sam Page on May 3, 2009 7:59 PM EDT up reply actions

I kind of wonder what kind of statistical analysis is going on

Like i get this picture of Baumer trying to explain this thing he discovered called OPS and Omar telling him to stop with the voodoo talk.

by Gina on May 3, 2009 8:03 PM EDT up reply actions

You're not far off

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/1306308/4536401

King of the bling come to lay down the evidence//Not George Bush, L-Millz be da president

by Sam Page on May 3, 2009 9:50 PM EDT up reply actions

I give up

thank you samt, for officially killing my spirit.

by Gina on May 3, 2009 9:54 PM EDT up reply actions

Ah, man. THAT sucks.

I officially could be a baseball GM.

"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw

by squid92 on May 3, 2009 10:24 PM EDT up reply actions

so he wrote a paper entitled "why OBP is a better indicator than batting average"

in 2007? really?

by englishgrey on May 3, 2009 10:54 PM EDT up reply actions

this is effin atrocious

We’d have been better off taking the $36 million and hiring the entire staff of Baseball Prospectus, and Keith Law.

by jasondg on May 3, 2009 11:18 PM EDT up reply actions

Or save the 36 million

and hire some random posters in here.

by Gina on May 3, 2009 11:25 PM EDT up reply actions

I nominate the original Scotty

and paperman.

'Oh yes, I know all about that duty-of-a-citizen stuff. It doesn't go. There are exceptions to every rule, and this was one of them. When a man risks his liberty to come and root at a ball-game, you've got to hand it to him. He isn't a crook. He's a fan.'

by Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright on May 3, 2009 11:30 PM EDT up reply actions

I like how we have to call him the original Scotty

that’s awesome

King of the bling come to lay down the evidence//Not George Bush, L-Millz be da president

by Sam Page on May 3, 2009 11:33 PM EDT up reply actions

I'm glad he came along first

cos it would be weird to refer to “the original centerpede 101” in a sentence.

by Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright on May 3, 2009 11:36 PM EDT up reply actions

"the original centerpede 101"

haha, that would sound like we’re talking about old school video games. i think there’s enough dorkage on here already.

by englishgrey on May 4, 2009 8:42 AM EDT up reply actions

And Rob Neyer.

And the Fangraphs guys.

"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw

by squid92 on May 3, 2009 11:41 PM EDT up reply actions

You must have incredible Google skills.

How the heck did you find that?

by SQUAD on May 3, 2009 8:32 PM EDT up reply actions

I don't remember

found it a long time ago.

King of the bling come to lay down the evidence//Not George Bush, L-Millz be da president

by Sam Page on May 3, 2009 11:33 PM EDT up reply actions

Janos Pach for GM!

by Reg Dunlop on May 3, 2009 9:36 PM EDT up reply actions

To me the biggest problem with the front office isn't that they don't have numbers guys

It’s that they don’t really scout well either. Teams like the Angels, and the Twins have been able to succeed while sort of balking at stats just because they scout and develop talent so well, we don’t seem to do anything well.

by Gina on May 3, 2009 9:16 PM EDT up reply actions

The dodgers are another pretty good example

I’d probably take Omar over Coletti any day of the week, but their scouting is so superior it manages to make up for Coletti’s fail with the talent they churn out.

by Gina on May 3, 2009 9:20 PM EDT up reply actions

and other part of that

is we don’t draft over-slot and handle our prospects poorly. /obvious

King of the bling come to lay down the evidence//Not George Bush, L-Millz be da president

by Sam Page on May 3, 2009 9:53 PM EDT up reply actions

Say what you want about Coletti.

But I think he has a pretty good offseason. Sure, he has a bad economy for allowing him to play hardball with Manny, but he also picked up Hudson and Ohman on the cheap. While he probably shouldn’t have resigned Blake (DeWitt would have been fine at 3B with Hudson at 2B), he has played pretty well for them. I also kind of liked the Haeger signing.

And as much as it pains me to admit this, Omar should have told Ollie to take a hike and gone out and signed Lowe and Wolf.

by SQUAD on May 3, 2009 11:40 PM EDT up reply actions

Meh

Meh I’m not a huge fan of signing Hudson, Dewitt/that asian guy who’s name I can never remember, probably could have produced similarly without them having to sacrifice a draft pick.

by Gina on May 3, 2009 11:46 PM EDT up reply actions

Come on.

I think we can get overly critical here. They were already going with Kemp, Ethier, Loney, and Kershaw. I’m not giong to criticize him for signing Hudson, especially considering it was only a one year deal.

by SQUAD on May 3, 2009 11:57 PM EDT up reply actions

Yeah that's true

I didn’t even mean to so much refer to the numbers guys, just that our FO seems to be lagging behind the times in most areas. Risk management, statistical analysis, scouting, etc. The one thing I will say that I can’t criticize them for I guess is that from what I understand Ray Ramirez and his crew are one of the better groups of trainers and medical staff around, but that’s just taking what I’ve heard others say and repeating it, I don’t have the kind of knowledge base to make that kind of judgment at all.

And really, I have some pent up aggression towards the entire management structure right now. I really try to lay off this kind of criticism. Just like with ballplayers, I don’t pretend to have their physical gifts, so I find it difficult to criticize their physical shortcomings. With FO guys and managers, I tend to think I don’t understand even fraction of the context their asked to do their job under, but when I can start immediately second guessing decisions that wind up having no obvious benefit to the team, well, its frustrating to watch.

by Mark Himmelstein on May 3, 2009 11:45 PM EDT up reply actions