orix pitching lab goes brrr: 5 new(ish) buffaloes pitchers to keep an eye on this year

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Welcome to the pitching lab

No one was particularly worried about the Orix Buffaloes pitching when they posted back-to-back-to-back Sawamura Award winner, PL triple crown winner, and PL MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto, primarily because they have a pitching lab. Just last year fireballer Shunpeita Yamashita made his top team debut and went on to win 2023 PL ROY. Not to mention they also have 2021 ROY Hiroya Miyagi, who prior to straining his chest was carrying a 1.89 FIP and a 24.3 K-BB% this year. Kohei Azuma even climbed his way to the top team as a developmental draft pick, becoming the first pitcher to start their career with winning 7 consecutive decisions en route to starting Game 3 of the 2023 Japan Series.

As a pitching lab, the Buffaloes are more or less continuing to put out arms. Whether they’ll all pan out we’ve yet to see, but here are five new(ish) Orix pitchers that might be interesting to keep on eye for the rest of 2024.

Some disclaimers before we continue:

  1. None of these names are surprising. If you follow Yakyu Cosmopolitan, you’ll have definitely heard of these names. It’s still interesting however that these are not players who played regularly on the top team last season.

  2. We are far, far from anything even remotely resembling a player evaluator. Don’t expect any cool discussions about the shape of their fastball or how they improved their mechanics this offseason or anything like that (we certainly wish we were smart enough to talk about those things).

  3. Just to be clear, we’re not running an Orix fan page here. We like players, not teams, and Orix just happens to produce a lot of players we find interesting.

1. The obvious one: Ryuhei Sotani

Where else to start other than Ryuhei Sotani. Yakyu Cosmopolitan had Sotani pegged as the No. 3 overall prospect and Orix’s No. 1 prospect coming into this season, although he’s already graduated by now.

Sotani was Orix’s first round draft pick in 2022, and started only 7 games in 2023. This season marks his first a full-fledged member of the rotation, where he’s been helping Anderson Espinoza and Luis Castillo carry the load for an Orix rotation that has lost Yamamoto (MLB), Miyagi (injured), Yamashita (who was working out some things on the farm, but just came back recently), Yamasaki (Nippon-Ham), and Yamaoka (injured to start the season).

Sotani has been one of the best domestic starters in Orix's rotation with Miyagi out.

Of the rotation they’ve had in May since Miyagi’s injury, he’s been the best domestic Orix starter with at least 30 IP in terms of FIP, xFIP, K%, and BB% (Miyagi would lead if he was still in). He’s also pushed his K/9 to 9.2 thanks to his June 11 start of 6 IP, 0 ER, 12 K. Needless to say, the kid is shoving.

Among lefities, minimum 100 fastball thrown, Sotani's fastball is in the 80th percentile in terms of velocity.

What else makes Sotani so special, aside from being the latest Orix whiz kid? He throws 92 mph, which in Japan is apparently already quite good for a lefty. He’s 80th percentile in fastball velo for left handed pitchers with at least 100 fastballs thrown.

All-in-all, Sotani looks to take the torch from Shunpeita Yamashita as the poster boy of the Orix pitching lab.

2. The prospect: Kyosuke Saito

Because he is not a full-time member of Orix's starting, Kyosuke Saito does not have innings under his belt. However in his very small sample size, he has been quite effective.

If Ryuhei Sotani has already graduated, who is now Orix’s No. 1 prospect? That would be Kyosuke Saito, who was drafted two rounds after Sotani back in 2022. He pitched 4 IP in 2023, and has gotten more starts in 2024, where he a currently has a 0.47 ERA and 0.83 WHIP, and is holding opponents to a 0.373 OPS over a small sample size of 19 1/3 IP.

His sub-1.00 ERA may not last long as he’s got a 44.00 OFFB% on the top team and a 43.6 OFFB% as a starter on the farm in a similar sample size, but again these samples might be small.

Saito’s still a prospect and as such may be expected to grow further still, but if he can maintain his current success and fully break out, perhaps we could be looking at the newest full-time member of the Orix rotation.

3. The rookie: Seiryu Kotajima

Success from lower round draft picks aren’t unheard of, but they’re always interesting to see. Ryuhei Sotani was a first rounder, and Kyosuke Saito was a third rounder, but rookie Seiryu Kotajima is a 2023 sixth round draft pick who’s already finding playing time on the top team.

Orix doesn’t only have elite starters, but they’ve also put out lights-out relievers as well, such as Yuki Udagawa and Soichiro Yamazaki. Udagawa and Yamazaki haven’t been playing as much this season, but Kotajima’s been holding down the fort in spectacular fashion, starting his career with 21 scoreless pitching appearances. While a 0.00 ERA obviously isn’t sustainable, his 3.06 FIP is still good for a 94 FIP-.

Even if his 0.00 ERA can't continue forever, Kotajima's FIP is still competitive among Orix bullpen arms and he's consuming innings while doing it. Only an NPB veteran (Kazutomo Iguchi) and an MLB veteran (Andres Machado) players have better FIP and more innings. Remember, Kotajima is keeping up as a rookie.

Even if Seiryu Kotajima may be experiencing some luck right now, it looks like Orix have found a new shut down option for their bullpen this season.

4. The comeback kid: Ren Mukunoki

Orix’s 2021 first round draft pick Ren Mukunoki started hot out the gate in 2022, pitching to a 1.02 ERA across four starts (one being one out away from a no-hitter) before needing Tommy John surgery.

Mukunoki has been hard at work on the farm since coming back from Tommy John.

Mukunoki’s now back in 2024 and has posted a 2.08 ERA, 2.62 FIP, 2.97 xFIP, and a 5% BB% on the farm across 37 IP. However, he unfortunately couldn’t replicate that success in a lone start on the top team, giving up 4 ER over 3 IP.

While we still need to see more of him on the top team, his underlying numbers hopefully show that he has indeed returned to form, making him a player to keep on eye on for the rest of 2024.

5. The unproven: Kazuma Satoh

If you thought Orix finding relative success with a sixth rounder was impressive, wait until you hear about Kazuma Satoh.

There are only two people who have pitched more innings than Ren Mukunoki on the farm, and one of them has a 3.78 ERA. The other one is Kazuma Satoh, who sports a 1.99 ERA while leading the farm in IP. Satoh has both more IP and a lower ERA than Mukunoki on the farm, but while Mukunoki was a first round pick, Satoh was a developmental draft pick in 2019.

In the previous graph, you might have noticed one player with more IP than Mukunoki while still having a sub-100 FIP-. That would be Kazuma Satoh.

Until this year, Satoh has never made an appearance on the top team. Even this year he spent most of the time of the farm. While many pitchers on Orix’s farm this year are just there to ramp up for the season or to get back into the groove before rejoining the top team, Satoh has been a consistent player on the farm, being only one of two pitchers there to have more than 40 IP. He never logged an ERA below 3.00 until this year, where he put up the aforementioned 1.99 ERA.

Perhaps his performance on the farm, which got him a 82 FIP- and 90 xFIP-, finally earned him a call to the top team. He made his debut this June 9, where he blanked the Giants for 5 innings, giving up 1 hit, 2 walks, and recording 3 strikeouts. Unfortunately, in his next appearance, he gave up 1 ER over 2/3 IP in relief.

The verdict is still not out for Kazuma Satoh as he’s hasn’t pitched much on the top team so far, but it’d be interesting to see how often they go back to him again later this year, if they do.

Pitching lab goes brrr (We have no better header for a conclusion)

Before we conclude, we should probably add Kohei Azuma as an honorable mention. Like Sotani, he also only played less than 10 games last year, so this is his first year being in the rotation from the get-go.

Anyway, that’s the list. We probably missed some good names to include here, and again, these players aren’t necessarily hidden gems. Just thought that these guys would be fun to keep tabs on this year.

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