I was waiting for Manny Machado or Bryce Harper to sign before dropping the last bit of offseason signings before the rankings that start on Monday, but apparently the Phillies only have $300 million for each, and they want $325-plus respectively, so we need to go forward with the news without Machado and Bryce. The last bit of big news was Yusei Kikuchi signing with the Mariners. He reminds me of every other Japanese pitcher, but not in a raycess way. He reminds me of Miles Mikolas too, who was only Asian after being reborn. It’s something about Asian pitchers, and non-Asian pitchers who go to Asia and return; they exercise some serious control. Maybe it’s the culture. I had a robot watch Gung Ho 15,000 times to tell me what it thinks and now the robot is speaking super-racist. Yo, robot, why are you so culturally inappropriate? “I have no culture of my own, so I adopt yours. And I kill puppies.” AHHH!!! ROBOT MURDERER!!! RUN!!! Or roll your swivel chair towards a door if running is too much for you. Kikuchi, which is going to be fun for me to say this year, comes with a lot less fanfare than Ohtani, but I do think he can be better than him, pitching-wise, in his first full season. Ohtani is a unicorn in Babe Ruth’s body, we all know this. Kikuchi reminds me of Mikolas and Ryu and others in that mold. He’s a decent strikeout guy, but won’t blow people away, while also having impeccable command. I’m definitely looking to draft him this year, then passing him up every other year when he fails to throw 130 IP in consecutive seasons because the Japanese also completely overwork their starters. In fact (Grey’s got more!), the Mariners have already said Kikuchi will only throw an inning or so every fifth or sixth start to try to preemptively avoid the inevitable arm injury that befalls every Japanese starter. For 2019, I’ll give Kikuchi projections of 9-7/3.67/1.18/136 in 151 IP. Anyway, here’s what else I saw this offseason for 2019 fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?