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Blue Jays Sing International Free Agent Shun Yamaguchi

By on January 15, 2020

The Toronto Blue Jays signed 32-year old pitcher Shun Yamaguchi of Japan to a two-year contract recently. I looked for a scouting report of Yamaguchi, and the best I could find was right here.

Yamguchi’s pitches, especially his slider, have some pretty unique movement. One of my complaints about Fujikawa was that his fastball was somewhat straight and mediocre in velocity. There are no such concerns with Yamguchi. His forkball basically falls off a table and should be an extremely effective pitch against left-handed hitters.

He has good size, less of a concern for a reliever, and has a pretty repeatable delivery. I like Yamaguchi a lot, and if he comes over to the MLB, I think he would have a lot of success in a late inning bullpen role.

It is interesting that the aggressive Blue Jays don’t fear mixing in a second international player on the heels of signing Hyun-Jin Ryu. For instance, the Los Angeles Angels didn’t want to sign Ryu due to the fact they already have Shohei Ohtani; and wanted to just focus their marketing efforts on a single country.

For the Blue Jays, no such concern exists. They have players on the roster from all over the world, and it’s kind of cool. No pun, there is some serious color and character to their roster.

Here’s Yamaguchi’s press conference, and he will be at Blue Jays’ Winterfest.

Seems like Toronto got another win here. We will wait and see until his name pops up in a few box scores.

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