Seattle Mariners Roster: Team Needs to Get Back into Japanese Market

At the end of the day, we all want to see the Seattle Mariners win baseball games. In order to win baseball games, the Mariners need very good players. 

And also at the end of the day, I don't really care where those very good players come from. Whether they are drafted and developed out of high school or college, whether they are signed out of Latin America, whether they are homegrown or traded for, whether they signed a big deal or for the league minimum, all that matters is that they play well and help the Mariners win.

And I really do trust that the Mariners are scouring every market they can to find talent. That said, there's one area that the M's have come up woefully short in over the last half-decade: Japan.

In the early part of the 2000s, the Mariners cornered the market on Japanese stars, signing Kazuhiro Sasaki (AL Rookie of the Year in 2000), Ichiro Suzuki (Hall of Famer) and Kenji Johjima. They also utilized Shigetoshi Hasegawa in the early 2000s and then eventually signed Munenori Kawasaki before 2012. They struck again with Yusei Kikuchi in 2019, but they haven't been in the Japanese market since.

They've missed out on Shohei Ohtani twice, Roki Sasaki, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Seiya Suzuki, Munetaka Murakami and Kazuma Okamoto. Some of those players they tried on, others they didn't. The market they once cornered has now left them behind and it's one they desperately need to try to get back into.

And with slugger Teruaki Sato, pitcher Hiromi Itoh and Kaima Taira all wanting to come to the big leagues this offseason, it feels like there is room to make in-roads there.

I talked more about Sato specifically on a recent edition of the "Refuse to Lose Territory" podcast.

"The other thing that I think is really important here, and again, I don't think it's going to happen on this one, but I want to see the Seattle Mariners try to establish the Japanese pipeline again because that was a recruiting advantage that they had had for years that they no longer have.

The Japanese pipeline, which was critical to this organization in a number of ways in the early 2000s and even into the mid-2000s, is completely non-existent at this point.

We know about Ichiro, we know about Kaz Sasaki. You remember Kenji Johjima. From 2000 until 2008 or so, the Mariners cornered the Japanese market. They haven't been in there since.

Yusei Kikuchi in 2019. Obviously, that didn't work out for Kikuchi here, but the Mariners haven't been involved. They tried with Shohei Ohtani before that and struck out, and that's been it.

So the Dodgers have the Japanese market largely cornered with Ohtani and Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki.

The Blue Jays are trying to corner the market next. They're also interested in Sato. You pair him with Kazuma Okamoto. The Blue Jays are trying to make themselves a truly global brand.

The Mariners are out of the conversation right now. That is a recruiting advantage the Mariners had forever. I long for the days for them to get that back, and I don't know if they're going to be able to. I don't think they're going to be able to here, but they need to try to get back into Japan."