One of the top relievers in Japan, right-hander Kyuji Fujikawa, is a free agent eligible to sign with MLB teams without going through the traditional posting process and Gerry Fraley of the Dallas Morning News reports that the Rangers are among multiple teams interested.
Fujikawa’s numbers in Japan are amazing. In eight years he’s never had an ERA higher than 2.01 and this season, at age 32, he posted a 1.32 ERA. He has 220 career saves and 914 strikeouts in 703 innings.
Plenty of Japanese relievers have had success coming to America, including Kazuhiro Sasaki, Takashi Saito, Shigetoshi Hasegawa, Hideki Okajima, Akinori Otsuka, and Koji Uehara. Fujikawa might be the best of the bunch in terms of his performance in Japan.
