Toronto Blue Jays fans lit up radio airwaves Tuesday morning voicing their displeasure that the club was unable to make the winning bid to land Japanese pitching sensation Yu Darvish.
10-year MLB veteran and former Japanese league pitcher CJ Nitkowski says that Jays fans have good reason to be upset, as he believes Darvish would have been an ideal fit in Toronto.
“I think it would have been a really nice fit for him. I would have liked to have seen him in the American League East,” Nitkowski told Jeff Blair on Sportsnet 590 The Fan.
“He would have given (the Jays) a huge boost, a team that’s already going in the right direction, and he will be missed even though he was never there.”
Nitkowski, who was the 9th-overall pick in the 1994 MLB amateur draft, believes Darvish would have ingratiated himself to the city rather easily if he decided to go north of the border.
“I think he really could have been an impact player and I think he would have been really comfortable in Toronto,” Nitkowski said. “Where he played in Hokkaido is very similar to Toronto, where he has the dome and a similar climate and a similar — somewhat — atmosphere and I think would have been very comfortable there and done really well.”
From 2006-2008 Nitkowski played in the Nippon Professional Baseball league — Japan’s equivalent to the MLB — and got a firsthand look at Darvish’s abilities.
“There’s 12 teams over there in Japan and I played in the same league that he did. I saw him quite a bit. There’s only six teams in your league and inter-league play is low. For 144 games, you see the same teams quite a bit,” Nikowski said.
“This guy is legit. This guy is a good pitcher. He has plus stuff, especially the fastball and slider which are his first two pitches. They’re swing-and-miss, number one starter type of pitches.”
In the past, high-profile Japanese pitchers have come to the Majors and found it difficult adjusting to the routine North American pitchers are accustomed to. Also, they often struggle against AL hitters, but Nitkowski believes Darvish will be an exception.
“Pitching in any division I think he would have been fine,” Nitkowski said. “There’s a lot of guys that come over from Japan that are not fit to pitch in the (AL East) or the American League at all — to be quite honest with you — and those guys are better fits in the National League. He’s not one of those guys. He’s one of the very few in Japan who has the raw stuff and the ability to compete, and that’s going to be unfortunate (for the Jays).”
Nitkowski said that the impact Darvish will have will go beyond the diamond and landing him could have meant bigger revenue and more exposure for the Jays.
“He’s a huge start in Japan nationally, not just where he played,” Nitkowski said. “There are going to be people in Japan that’ll watch everything he does as they do with all the big stars that come over here, with Ichiro (Suzuki), with Dice-K (Daisuke Matsuzaka), with (Hideki) Matsui; (Darvish) is the next one. There aren’t a ton of guys over there that I think are impact players that come from Japan, but in my opinion he’s definitely one of them.
Time will tell if Darvish’s decision was worth the hype, but if the 25-year-old is all he’s cracked up to be, he could become the next big star in the MLB.
“Usually I downplay (highly anticipated prospect signings) but I was quite excited about this too because I think he’s that special,” Nitkowski said. “He is a once in a lifetime kind of guy coming from Japan.”
Nitkowski, 38, played 336 games in the MLB from 1995-2005. Since 2009, Nitkowski has played professionally in Korea for the NEXEN Heroes.
