Atlanta Braves Third Base Vacancy – Nobuhiro Matsuda
By Fred Owens
Jae-Gyun Hwang – profiled yesterday – isn’t the only free agent from the far east available this off season who could fill the Atlanta Braves third base vacancy.
Nobuhiro Matsuda third baseman of the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks (seen here at Yokohama Stadium) is now and unrestricted free agent. Will the Braves make him and offer? Photo by ぽこ太郎
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Japanese veteran Nobuhiro Matsuda is an unrestricted free agent and just had the best season of his career – haven’t they all?
Nobuhiro Matsuda
Matsuda is a 10 year veteran of the Japanese leagues playing third base exclusively for the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks. At 5’ 10”, 185 and 32 years old (33 in May) he’s both smaller in stature and older than Hwang; he’s also been a more consistent power hitter over his career.
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Last season he posted a .287/.357/.533/.889 line for Softbank including 35 homers, 22 doubles and 2 triples while striking out 135 times and walking 60 in 603 PA.
Matsuda’s career line sits at .277/.325/.477/.803 but as I did with Hwang, I focused on recent performance and limited the numbers to the last four years.
All statistics courtesy Baseball-Reference.com
Why Matsuda?
The obvious reason is that he’s an unrestricted free agent so there’s no posting fee. Arguably he played in a tougher league than Hwang and has a longer track record of success on both sides of the ball.
He is older but third basemen age gracefully and the everyday Japanese league players who’ve come over have held up pretty well as they got older. He also offers a sustained history of power that should translate to MLB.
While he won’t be a 35 homer guy he should hit 20 and that’s something we don’t have at third base now. It should be easier to negotiate with for a cost certain than Hwang although his AAV will be higher.