Kenshin Kawakami: Atlanta Braves 2010 Player Preview

This player preview was written by Corey Crocker, who posts here as palioc33.

I've seen many people throughout this offseason request that Kenshin Kawakami be traded, or that Frank Wren should never have signed him. "It's a bad contract." "It's preventing us from signing a bat." I don't think they were watching the same pitcher I was last season. In 2009, Kawakami was coming over from Japan having never pitched in the Major Leagues nor having ever lived in America. That is a big adjustment for anybody to make. Understanding this I expected him to struggle some for the first month or two. And right on cue he didn't have a really good April, posting a 7.06 ERA and a 1 - 3 W-L record.

Given that this was the first look people had at Kawakami, they naturally assumed he wasn't that good of a pitcher. But then came May, or should I say the start against the Blue Jays and Roy Halladay. Most people said we shouldn't even play the game. Just let the Blue Jays take the win vs. Kawakami. He of course ended up out-pitching Roy Halladay with 8 shutout innings for the win. And if you look at the rest of his stats for May and June there is a clear sign that he had adjusted to life in America and the style of play in the Major Leagues. He posted an ERA of 3.03 and 3.33, in May and June, respectively, even posting a .208 average allowed for the month of June.

He continued to pitch well into September when he was moved to the bullpen to make way for Hudson's return from injury. This was a smart move because he mainly pitched in 6-man rotations in Japan and the move prevented him from overextending himself at the end of the year due to exhaustion. (He ended up with a 2.63 ERA in September.)

Now the question is what can we expect from him heading into 2010. Will he be better? Will he be worse? Most people first look at the W-L record of a pitchers performance. However, Kawakami's 7 - 12 record is grossly skewed. In his 25 starts he received the third lowest run support in the league. You obviously can't win many ballgames if you don't get any runs.  Another reason is that he didn't pitch deeply in many ballgames. During the season he had the propensity to walk people early in the game and reach the 100 pitch mark in the 5th or 6th inning, and Bobby didn't want his pitch count to get too high.

Kawakami, however, should get his walk rate under control this year. If you look at his stats from Japan you see that his walk rate last year was double his normal walk rate in Japan. He is a control pitcher and with a year under his belt he should return to being the pitcher he was in Japan. That means he will get deeper into ballgames with more chances to win games. And we can only hope he gets better run support. With our rotation full of 4 high profile pitchers in front of Kawakami, he will have the ability to stay out of the spotlight and surprise teams that are worrying more about the other guys.

Thanks to Corey for a great preview.