2007 Free Agents and Posted Players

Thanks, Jim. Your info on these players is greatly appreciated annually.

I was surprised that Kazumi Saitoh was not one of the "Players to Watch." He's an elite pitcher in the Japanese leagues, and I have been hearing that he's a candidate to come over next year, and the DOB listed on this site indicates he won't turn 30 until November 30, 2007.

Also, I have heard that Torichika Aoki and Yu Darvish may be candidates to jump to the U.S. I would be interested in any info you can provide on how likely these 2 will come over and when. Also, is Kyuji Fujikawa a candidate for MLB? He has put up some monster numbers in relief over the past 2 years.

Pitchers just don't amass the numbers quick enough to make it into the players to watch. I haven't the time to fix that right now, so it won't be done this year. As for the others, it may be years before they're able to come, and they haven't made my cutoffs for players to watch. Ergo, I'm not going there right now. Sorry.

BTW, the player data is on this site, and much of the means to do my calculations are laid out in my articles. If you contact me through my baseballguru.com address, I can help with any questions you have about the method - but I won't be doing the work, you will.

Jim Albright

Darvish just played his first full pro season last year and is practically going to be the Fighters' marquee player this year at the age of 20. It's pretty unlikely he will be going anywhere for the next several years, I'd guess.