Junichi Tazawa to head straight to majors

September 15, 3:46 PMAsian-American Sports ExaminerMichael Street

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It's a story a long time coming, and long predicted. With so many Japanese players coming over to the majors once they'd proven themselves in the Japanese leagues, it was inevitable that someone decided to skip the preliminary step altogether and come straight over the Pacific.

That someone is Junichi Tazawa.

The star of last year's Baseball World Cup, Tazawa announced yesterday that he would go straight to the US major leagues. "I feel strongly that the best course is to test myself in America," he said, and several teams have already shown interest in him. 

No amateur player has ever gone straight to MLB without first proving himself in Japan, a step long regarded as necessary. The Japanese leagues have been thought of as a so-called quadruple-A league, with a level of talent somewhere between a top minor league team and the majors.

Japanese players were thought to be too small, their stadiums too cozy (therefore inflating power and averages), their methodology too mechanical (pitchers always throw fastballs on 3-2 counts) or too soft (pitchers bow to batters after hitting them). But the success of players from Ichiro Suzuki to Hideo Nomo has shattered that stereotype, and more and more Japanese players see the majors as the next level of competition, one they can attain without too many years of service in Japan.

Teams are clearly in agreement--just look at the $50 million shelled out by Boston in 2006 just for the privilege of talking to Daisuke Matsuzaka, to say nothing of the $50+ million contract they signed with him afterwards.

There are more Japanese players in the majors now than ever, and the fact that some of them have failed (Hideki Irabu, Kei Igawa, and Yasuhiko Yabata, to name a few) is actually a curious measure of success. When there's still a cross-Pacific frenzy for players like Matsuzaka or Tazawa in spite of past failures, it means the "experiment" of important Japanese players is working, or GMs wouldn't bother to even look at guys like Dice-K or Kosuke Fukodome.

The merging of Eastern and Western baseball is coming closer every day, and Tazawa's decision to go straight to MLB is just the beginning.