Cardinals Sign Japanese Pitcher
Nope, not Kenshin Kawakami, Koji Uehara or Takashi Saito. Sponichi is reporting that the Cardinals signed for Kintetsu Buffaloe Katsuhiko Maekawa to a minor league deal. You might remember that Maekawa lost his job in Japan over a drunk driving hit and run driving incident (and not pitching very well), played in the Domican Winter League, signed a deal with the Nationals, and then finally couldn’t get a US work visa. He never actually played in the Nats’ system, hopefully he’ll get a shot with the Cards.
Maekawa is in the Venezuelan Winter League this year where he’s put up pretty unimpressive numbers: 0-2, 6.39 era in 4 appearances.
21/12/2008 at 6:16 am Permalink
Wasn’t the reason that Maekawa couldn’t get a visa due to the hit and run on his record? What makes the Cardinals think he’ll clear the State Department this time?
21/12/2008 at 2:57 pm Permalink
Good question. I looked at his wikipedia page, and it just said that his visa was “late”. I guess there’s a missing element to the story, but I guess if his visa gets rejected the Cardinals probably won’t be too upset.
22/12/2008 at 7:02 am Permalink
I don’t know for sure that the hit and run was the cause of his visa denial the first time. I just put 1 (he was guilty of a serious crime) and 1 (his visa was denied) together and came to that conclusion. I’m sure that there are other values of 1 (like applying late) that are possible.
22/12/2008 at 7:43 am Permalink
It’s also possible that his record could have slowed down his application process. Most of the visa application forms I’ve seen have some type of background check-ish section to them.