3 things said at Kohei Arihara news conference that should please Texas Rangers fans
Kohei Arihara’s next baseball stop is, presumably, the Surprise Recreation Campus in Arizona for Texas Rangers spring training to begin the transition to Major League Baseball after six seasons in Nippon Professional Baseball.
The Rangers signed Arihara last month to a two-year, $6.2 million contract, and he is expected to be a mainstay in the 2021 rotation.
In a final NPB act Sunday, one that has become customary for players headed to the U.S., he took part in a news conference in Japan at the minor-league complex of his old team, the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters.
A few things Arihara and Fighters manager Hideki Kuriyama said should give Rangers fans some hope that the right-hander won’t be an NPB-to-MLB bust. One might come as a pleasant surprise to those who are wary of the Rangers’ ability to develop pitchers.
Culture for success
As the courtship of Shohei Ohtani taught the Rangers, taking the most financially lucrative offer isn’t always what’s most important to a player from Japan.
Ohtani chose the Los Angeles Angels because he felt a connection during their meeting and thought they gave him the best opportunity to flourish in the majors. The Rangers and Seattle Mariners had more money and were willing to get more.
Arihara chose the Rangers, reportedly over the San Diego Padres and Boston Red Sox, for the same reason Ohtani picked the Angels.
“I felt the warmth and passion from the Rangers and thought this was the culture I can grow and do my best,” he said.
Rangers officials said they have pinpointed areas where they think Arihara can improve and identified pitches they think will serve him best against MLB hitters.
Great. But which pitchers have the Rangers, who have an ugly history at developing pitchers, made better in recent seasons?
Answer: Lance Lynn, who took to the Rangers’ suggests on how to mix his pitches better and turned them into fifth- and sixth-place finishes in the past two American League Cy Young votes.
Knowing who he is
Arihara won’t light up radar guns the way Yu Darvish does, and his off-speed pitches aren’t as sharp as those thrown by Darvish and Masahiro Tanaka, a free agent who hopes to re-sign with the New York Yankees.
No one needs to tell Arihara that.
Rather than try to blow hitters away, Arihara knows that he will have to mix speeds, work from ahead in the count and not give in.
He’s going to have to pitch. Gasp.
“There are going to be more pitchers who throw harder and hitters with more power,” Arihara said. “I will use the pitching tactics and tenacity I learned from the Fighters against them.”
The Rangers believe that Arihara, 28, has a chance to strike out more hitters than he did in Japan by using MLB hitters’ aggressiveness against them. He pitches around the zone, which is going to make his off-speed pitches harder to take when a hitter is down in the count.
Arihara throws seven pitches, but his slider and split-fingered fastball could pump up his strikeout totals from what he did in Japan.
Vote of confidence
Kuriyama, who led the Fighters to the NPB championship in 2016 with Ohtani and Arihara in the rotation, called Arihara’s signing with the Rangers some good news in a difficult season.
He also said that the Fighters, who received a $1.4 million posting fee as a result of the contract, should have made Arihara available to MLB teams long ago.
There’s little doubt that Arihara will find success in the U.S., Kuriyama said.
“Honestly, we should have let him challenge MLB sooner,” he said. “But we were able to become Japan champions together, and I believe he will become a pitcher who can hold down MLB hitters. I dream about that, so I am looking forward to it becoming a reality.”
Here’s another vote of confidence: Joe Furikawa, the director of Pacific Rim operations for the Rangers, said last month that Arihara has a complete package. Furikawa, who also helped the Rangers successfully court Darvish late in 2011, has been watching Arihara since he was in high school.
