A decent writeup of him:
http://www.npbtracker.com/2009/05/player-profile-ryota-igarashi/#content

High 90s fastball, power splitter, decent breaking pitch. Very good K numbers, not great but not unreasonable BB numbers.

Doesn’t disguise the ball at all on that clip. Fastball looks flat. In the longer clip of him striking out the side, he pitched backward. Doubt he’d be effective in MLB.

after Igarashi made his intentions known about pursuing an MLB career:

“Igarashi will probably run into a couple of big problems in the U.S. First, his velocity is nothing special for MLB. And, more importantly, he has a throwing motion where he “cocks” his arm and the batter gets a very good view of the ball before it ever leaves his hand. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t have a gopher ball problem if he goes to the U.S.

I wonder if he’ll do well in the U.S. If I were a GM in MLB, I’d also remember the case of Shinji Mori before doling out too much money to Igarashi."

He does not throw consistently in the upper ‘90s, not even close. Prior to his arm injuries which shut him down for part of 2006 and all of 2007, he at times hit the 154-157 km/h range. But the times I’ve seen him post-injury, I’ve seen him much more at just 150 km/h or less.

I remember one year in his prime he pitched against the visiting MLB All-Stars in November. Now I don’t usually make much of those series due to them being held after a grueling season and, especially on the MLB side, tending to be somewhat out of shape. But I do remember someone absolutely teeing off on an Igarashi pitch at the Tokyo Dome and, when asked afterwards, the player said Igarashi threw pretty hard, but the ball was easy to see out of his hand.

In the end, I think Vlad is right. He could be a decent pick-up, but it depends on the price. I would say somewhere in the 2yr/$3-4 million range.

would be in the ballpark. With his injury history, we might want to be creative with the 2nd year and have some flexibility with performance incentives, options etc.

the front office didn’t ask my opinion.

I’ll just say that there are many ways for NH/FC to improve the Pirates in 2010 without getting away from the long-term goal of a championship-caliber team in a few years.

Akinori Iwamura should be a useful player for us, and Ryota Igarashi could be a nice addition, too.

I think that’s a very good comparison. And with Igarashi being a much more experienced pitcher, I think he could do even more if he stayed healthy and one or both of Capps and Hanrahan don’t get the job done in 2010.

Igarashi fits the mold of what NH seems to want in a reliever-righties who throw hard.

One way or the other, we need more quality bullpen depth heading into spring training, rather than relying on Yankees’ rejects to fill out the ’pen.