The Most Valuable Pitcher Signed Out of Japan

Well, that's Hideo Nomo, at 4.9 WAR. A fine season by any measure. But I bet you can't guess who's the second-most valuable pitcher signed as a free agent out of Japan. It's not Ishii. it's not Sasaki. Dice-K? Get out of here. Hiroki Kuroda? Close, but no cigar.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, your WAR runner-up is...Colby Lewis at 4.4 WAR.

A Winner is You!

When I heard that Lewis--a onetime top prospect for the Rangers (he was the 38th pick in 1999)--was returning to the States after a stint in Japan, my interest was initially piqued for one reason only - I actually owned Lewis on my first fantasy baseball team ever, in 2004. He was decidedly mediocre, got injured, and I dropped him, and that was that. So I took his return as his opportunity to repay my initial faith in me, because he OWES me. Yeah, I kid, I kid.

But outside of that, he was intriguing because he utterly dominated Japanese hitters, leading the Central League in strikeouts both seasons he was there. He added a pitch to his repertoire (by some accounts a cutter, but it looks like a slider to me), got aggressive, and blew guys away like he'd never done before. So I went all-in on him this year, owning him in all of my leagues. It turned out to be one of the only good decisions I made all year.

Now granted, he got a teensy bit lucky this season. A flyball pitcher in Arlington usually yields light shows rivaling the 4th of July, but the strikeout rate is legit. His fastball is 3-4 MPH slower than he threw as a prospect, but he throws that new slider a whopping near-30% of the time. And boy, that pitch is filthy; worth 13.6 runs above average! By comparison, this year, Mariano Rivera's cutter was worth 16.7.

I think it's interesting how poorly major league teams have done scouting Japanese starters, though it's not like I myself would have guessed that Hiroki Kuroda would turn out to be a better pitcher than Dice-K. Perhaps we should temper our expectations for Yu Darvish?

An Ode to GameFan

As a founding member of the Nintendo Generation growing up in the barren era before the Internet, we relied SOLELY on magazines to whet our appetites for upcoming games. It still, to this day, blows my mind that people nowadays can load up video and gameplay previews on their computers in the comfort of their own homes. This is a travesty. You kids don't know how good you've got it - when we were that age, we would masturbate furiously over a 1-inch screenshot of Mortal Kombat II. Now get off my lawn!

So my favorite magazine, bar none, was GameFan. Now don't get me wrong; this magazine was a piece of shit. They apparently had no copy editor on staff (actual line, errors intact: "...if you're looking for some arcade style fun, Chiki Chiki boys comes highly recommended.!!") and every page looked like a blind high school student's first time using Photoshop:

But the paper...oh the paper. While competitors essentially used colored newsprint for their rags, GameFan was thick and glossy and the colors just popped out at you. It smelled wonderful. Most importantly, GF was special because it had a special focus on import games. There was something so appealingly exotic about Japanese games, and the snobby tone of the magazine (most of the later issues were nothing but complaints about how the pure Japanese software got mangled by American localization teams) made you feel like you were part of the cognoscenti, sort of like the jackass who always has to remind you that he was listening to Coldplay while they were still called Starfish and oh my god they are such corporate sellouts blah blah blah.

I was reminded of GameFan because today I bought a copy of Lunar: Eternal Blue for Sega CD. I had opened up an issue of the magazine 16 (!) years ago with a review of the game and decided that this was one I really wanted to play, only at the time I didn't have any of the necessary hardware. Or the money to buy the hardware. Or the money to buy the game, for that matter. I thought it would be a cool idea today to close the loop, so to speak, and track down a scan of that particular magazine and read the review again:

"The reason I harped so long on the translation is because I was a huge fan of the Japanese original, and I'm a hyper-purist. Even so, I can't think of a better way to end the Sega CD's brief, uneventful foray into the gaming world than with Lunar: Eternal Blue."

Ah, GameFan. You were written straight from the Purist Snob Mad Libs book, but I still love you.

Best Quote of Week 5

Apparently Troy Aikman has taken one too many concussive hits to the head, because during the Green Bay - Washington game today, he unleashed this gem after Mason Crosby missed a 53 yard field goal:

"Really a good kick, other than the fact that it didn't go in."

I wish this guy was my dad. Life would have been so much easier growing up...

"Your application to Harvard was really a good one, other than the fact that you didn't get in."

"That swing was a really good one, other than the fact that you missed the ball completely."

Bonus: Best quote of Week 4, Lions Edition:

Announcer 1: Jason Hanson - He's been one of their best draft picks, ever
Announcer 2: Yeah, which is part of the problem.