The Everlasting Legacy of Kei Igawa, the Flying Monkey

All this talk around the NY media today about Kei Igawa got me to thinking about this signing. I've been trying to figure this out for some time now, and I think this may be the reason why this went down.  Why for the life of me, did this man get $46M thrown at him, and for what, to leave balls up in the zone to be crushed out?

Here's what went down:

Off-season 2006-2007 the Yankees were in a negotiating fight for Japanese superstar Daisuke Matsuzaka with the Boston Red Sox.  The Sox were willing to cough up more dough for him than the Yankees.  Here ends the war for Daisuke.  Seeing this, the Yankee front office (possibly with the influence of the Boss) saw this and thought just to match the Sox they needed to bring in a successful Japanese pitcher themselves.  So they looked around, and found a guy a lot of us had not heard of before, 3-time strikeout king, Kei Igawa.  Now, Igawa was by no stretch of the imagination the superstar that Daisuke was, but still a success nonetheless.  (See stats below for his Japanese career).  The Yankees took $46M and threw it at Igawa so they could have an export themselves.  So now the Yankees are level with the Red Sox, at least in the minds of the management.  Coming into the season with all the confidence in the world, Igawa takes the mound, and time after time the results were the same, he could never get his pitches down, so he would get pounded up and down the order, getting his pitches crushed out of the yard.  The Yankees then sent Igawa down to the minors to work on his mechanics.  He came back to the majors, and seemingly still had no idea what to do whether it was as a starter or as a reliever. He then got sent down to AAA again.  When the Padres claimed Igawa, Cashman pulled him off waivers, seemingly having hope left in him for whatever reason.  He came back to the majors when rosters expanded in September.  Then in his all-time shining moment, Igawa dresses up as a flying monkey.  Igawa then gets left off the playoff roster, giving him an extra month to fix things over the off-season.  In what looks to be his second chance, and possibly his last with the Yankees, he allows a grand slam to a college player who hasn't played for 2 years.  Igawa says he isn't worried though, if that is any consolation .  The saga will continue throughout the season.

This was another signing out of ignorance for the Yankees in recent years, going along with those of the likes of Randy Johnson, Carl Pavano, Kevin Brown and Jaret Wright.  This was just a move out of possible jealousy and the need to spend money to get even with a team.  I think the Yankees may have learned a lesson on this one, because they didn't try to match the Mets with the Santana deal.  Hopefully Cash & Co. have finally learned their lesson here, young, homegrown pitching is good pitching.

Japanese Stats:

Year	Team	G	W	L	SV	IP	K	BB	HR	ERA
1998	Hanshin	―	―	―	―	―	―	―	―	―
1999	Hanshin	7	1	1	0	15.1	14	13	1	6.46
2000	Hanshin	9	1	3	0	39.1	37	19	5	4.35
2001	Hanshin	29	9	13	0	192.0	171	89	11	2.67
2002	Hanshin	31	14	9	1	209.2	206	53	15	2.49
2003	Hanshin	29	20	5	0	206.0	179	58	15	2.80
2004	Hanshin	29	14	11	0	200.1	228	54	29	3.73
2005	Hanshin	27	13	9	0	172.1	145	60	23	3.86
2006	Hanshin	29	14	9	0	209	194	49	17	2.97
Total	―	190	86	60	1	1244	1174	395	116	3.14

   (credit that to Wikipedia's Kei Igawa page)