Cliff Hangers wrote:Very interesting deal here. Takeuchi is a solid performer, but he's going to be 26 soon, and he's suffered seven injuries in the past three seasons (five of those injuries coming with 3 or more weeks of downtime). Perhaps I'm just overly sensitive, but the LRS is an injury grinder.
I see why HYA did it, but at the end of the day KUW wasn't going anywhere this year _with_ Takeuchi that they can't get to without him, so I think HYA's 1st rounder (which will be a good player), a third pick, and $1.9M has got to be considered too good to pass up.
It is hard to deny what a stud Takeuchi is offensively. Thought he does have his limits. His defense is workable at best. He is injury prone. And he has massive L/R splits, so much so that I considered platooning him. He benefited massively from the park layouts in Kuwana and SS, which favor LH power hitters. I think he will be somewhat less of a player in HYA than he was in SS or KUW. But even with all that said, he is fully developed and a sure thing talent wise. Hard to turn down for a team looking to get in to the mix of things pretty soon.
On the flip side; Mark, the Captain Nemo of the LRS, gets another whale. He seems to be going all out for the 2020 draft. I am sure he will be making a lot more calls trying to secure as much of that 1st round as possible.
