Reese Kaplan -- Some Prejudice in Baseball Still Exists

During this baseball off season there is going to be a projected record setting free agency contract that will be issued to the man who stands atop the list of players available to go to the highest bidder.  Media types and fans have all been kicking around numbers and duration of the deal.  The consensus seems to be $500 million or more for the league's first two-way player of note since Hall of Famer Babe Ruth.  

Others offered that the number would have been closer to $650 million if he had not rendered himself into a hitter only for 2024 due to recovery from surgery affecting his ability to pitch.

What makes this situation doubly surprising is not the level of talent nor the amount of home run power or capability to dominate hitters when he's on the mound.  The distinction we are to discuss today is that Shoehei Ohtani is still something of a rarity in American baseball.  

He is native Japanese and grew up as a star in the Nippon Professional Baseball Organization (NPB) before taking the plunge with the Angels five years ago as a still young outfielder/pitcher when he inked his deal to become the future paycheck king in all of baseball.

Ohtani is not alone in success by an Asian-born ballplayer using his skills on American soil.  Up the coast from Los Angeles perhaps the best known Japanese player who excelled here was none other than the Mariners' Ichiro Suzuki.  During his rookie year back in 2001 at age 27 Ichiro hit .350, stole 56 bases, won a Silver Slugger and a Gold Glove.  For those efforts he received not only the American League Rookie of the Year Award but also the AL's Most Valuable Player Award.  During his 18 year career in the USA he finished up with a .311 batting average, 10 All Star selections, 10 Gold Gloves, an All Star Game MVP and 2 batting titles.  

When the dust settled in 2018, Ichiro posted 60 WAR which is higher than a great many already enshrined players in Cooperstown.  He has a chance to do something that's never before happened -- an Asian ballplayer making into America's Hall of Fame.  It has never before happened.

This conjecture about impressive Asian ballplayers has come to the surface as the Mets already have the runner up to the National League Rookie of the Year in pitcher Kodai Senga.  With the departures of both Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander (as well as free agent Carlos Carrasco) he's now the presumed number one starting pitcher for the ballclub.  

Everyone is very happy to have him and while it might be easier to market the accomplishments of Pete Alonso, Francisco Alvarez, Edwin Diaz, Francisco Lindor, Brandon Nimmo and others.  Marketing has to do with fan acceptance of the ballplayers' accomplishments and helps sell tickets, player jerseys and fosters goodwill among the fan base.  

Come this particular offseason signs are pointing to the Mets making a top level effort to sign 25 year old ace starting pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto from the NPB as well.  This time around given his five-year age advantage and even more amazing collection of baseball metrics as the best starting pitcher in Japan (including a career ERA under 2.00) it is expected to be a much more expensive contract, likely in the $200 million area for 7-10 years.  

No one is denying that Yamamoto deserves a deal of that magnitude but it would make him the second Asian pitcher in the club's rotation.  

Think long and hard for a minute...how many MLB teams feature not just one but multiple Japanese or Korean ballplayers?  While you ponder that question, now ask the harder one to answer.  Why not?

No one is suggesting that every Asian-born player will necessarily succeed at the levels demonstrated by Ohtani, Suzuki and others.  For every one of them there is a Kaz Matsui or a Tsuyoshi Shinjo.  The reality is that good and bad ballplayers exist all over the globe.  Several others have been solid for periods of time like Hideo Nomo, Nori Aoki, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Kenta Maeda, Yu Darvish and others.  

The difference is when an American, Hispanic or other foreign-born ballplayer doesn't succeed, the reaction is disappointment, some latent hostility about his team's scouting department, and folks move on to whomever the next borderline ballplayer is in the spotlight.  However, when a Japanese or Korean ballplayer doesn't perform at an All Star level right away the conversation arises about an alleged inferior level of competition in those foreign leagues and how it should reinforce the prejudice against bringing Asian players into the USA as a matter of building a roster.  

It's interesting that no one brings up eliminating the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba and other sources of baseball players when someone from those places doesn't succeed they don't talk about eliminating these locations from future prospective scouting.

For a long time, obviously the Major League Baseball establishment felt that black ballplayers could not be a part of the rosters of the major league teams.  We're all aware of the value Jackie Robinson had in breaking the color barrier and hopefully nowadays no one considers anything more than the back-of-the-baseball-card statistics when considering the value of a ballplayer rather than the color of his skin.  If the same question arose about how many clubs have multiple black ballplayers the answer would come back as all of them.  

So when the Mets might consider not just Yamamoto but also lefty Japanese pitcher Shota Imanaga and perhaps Korean outfielder Jung-hoo Lee (with a lifetime batting average of .349), these types of player performances may indeed help the ballclub return to contention for October baseball.  However, now you're theoretically talking about not one or two but potentially as many as four Asian born ballplayers on one team.  How would fans react to that kind of roster construction?  

If they succeed, chances are it would be a minor hiccup.  If they don't then the fans and media types would be all over the Mets for putting too much stock in Senga's output in 2023 to make intelligent investments in 2024 and beyond.  Any way you choose to slice it, that type of reaction smacks of an anti-Asian prejudice.

So what can be done to change team's attitudes about Asian ballplayers?  Hire them.  Play them.  Understand that not all will be superstars, but signing MLB free agents is the same kind of crap shoot.  How well did Jason Bay work out?  How about Dellin Betances?  No one is saying not to sign Canadian ballplayers nor folks from Brooklyn based upon these examples.  Yet if the Mets sign an Asian player and he turns into the second coming of one of these unfortunate contracts, that anti-Asian sentiment will rear its ugly head again.

This profile in ignorance has to change.