The righty reliever who the New York Mets are taking a chance on could be traded in a few months.
The former right-hander Shintaro Fujinami of the Oakland A’s has signed to a one-year contract with the New York Mets. According to reports, he will earn $3.35 million, with an additional $850,000 in incentives included in his deal. Jake Diekman, a former A’s lefty, was also signed by the Mets yesterday for an estimated $4 million, according to Anthony DiComo. The deal includes a 2025 vesting option. Five former A’s players make up the current Mets roster, which also includes Starling Marte, Joey Wendle, and Sean Manaea among its 26 players.
Around this time last year, the A’s signed Fuji out of Japan. He brought with him a potent arsenal, but there were doubts about his ability to properly utilise his pitch mix. The A’s saw a lot of both his positive and negative traits in 2023.
During the regular season and spring training, Fujinami had several outings when he was dominating, recording a high amount of strikeouts, and appearing completely unhittable. Then all of a sudden, he would walk the bases loaded and his command would simply vanish.
The A’s were eager to offer Fuji a chance to start, so he decided to take advantage of their final off-season. Before being sent to the bullpen, he had four rotational turns and a 14.40 ERA. He would go on to start for the squad three more times, for a total of seven “starts” in the campaign.
Fuji was a far better alternative out of the bullpen, and if he didn’t finish the job, the pitching staff as a whole wasn’t negatively impacted for days. When he would only pitch a few innings, the bullpen would have to come in and close out the game, which would put further pressure on the remaining starters to step up.
After 61 1/3 innings as a reliever, Fuji had a 5.14 ERA, which was respectable enough for the Baltimore Orioles to take a risk on him around the trade deadline. When the O’s were his only opponents, he had a 4.85 ERA.
Fujiami pitched 79 innings, gave up 45 walks, struck out 83 batters, and had an ERA of 7.18 overall. The righty is a tempting trade candidate for the Mets in July if he can combine his powerful stuff with more control over his offerings, as the team is not anticipated to compete in 2024.