SoftBank Brings Petagine Back to Japan
Looking for another power hitter, the SoftBank Hawks have pulled former NPB star Roberto Petagine off the scrap heap, signing him to a $400k deal with performance bonuses. Petagine previously played for Yakult from 1999-2002, where he was an absolute terror, before Yomiuri signed him to replace Hideki Matsui’s bat. Since leaving Japan, Petagine has spent time with the Red Sox, Mariners and LG Twins of Korea.
Petagine joins a rather crowded 1B/3B/DH/LF depth chart. I figure whatever at-bats he gets will come at the expense of Lee Beom-Ho. Nobuhiro Matsuda seems to be getting most of the starts at third, relegating Lee to a bench role despite his superior OPS (.741 vs .691). Hiroki Kokubo (1B) and Jose Ortiz (LF) are off to good starts, and Nobuhiko Matsunaka is SoftBank’s DH, even though he’s not the hitter he once was.
Two other questions remain:
- How much of his wife, who is about 30 years older, be seen at Fukuoka Dome? She was ever-present in Roberto’s Yakult days.
- Will Tuffy Rhodes get another shot? (Rakuten? Nippon Ham?) Petagine is, of course, playing for a fraction of what Rhodes turned down from Orix.
15/04/2010 at 11:28 am Permalink
Rakuten sent Phillips down. Rasner can’t last much longer. They will soon only have one foreign player on their roster. Its desperate dumster dive time for sure.
15/04/2010 at 11:54 am Permalink
Tuffy doesn’t count as a foreign player any more, but I’d rather have Linden in the field than him.
15/04/2010 at 12:54 pm Permalink
25 years senior to be exact.
15/04/2010 at 1:57 pm Permalink
Good point about Tuffy, I hadn’t thought about that. Linden is the only foreign player I would keep. I believe he will come around.
15/04/2010 at 8:14 pm Permalink
Linden is such a strikeout machine. He had 100+ in half a season last year and in the several games i’ve seen him in this year he’s just looked bad bad bad.
I was surprised they retained him this year, actually.
15/04/2010 at 10:45 pm Permalink
You said it. 105 K’s in 282 AB’s for Linden last year. Ouch. This year 28 K’s in 75 PA’s. He does have a little pop and walks in about 10% of his PA’s, so if he can pull the avg up to about .260 overall his numbers should be respectable.
15/04/2010 at 11:45 pm Permalink
I was surprised from the preseason that the Hawks weren’t going to give Lee regular playing time, I thought he was supposed to be one of the major offseason acquisitions.
Tuffy’s probably still too expensive for most clubs.
16/04/2010 at 2:46 am Permalink
Ha. Looks like Jobu Morita starting in Linden’s place today.
16/04/2010 at 9:09 am Permalink
turns out that Linden is hurt: http://www.sanspo.com/baseball/news/100416/bsh1004162349007-n1.htm
Also Kyle, your facebook link keeps getting your comments caught in my spam filter. If you stop using that as your link you should get right through.