This former Orioles reliever has signed a minor league deal with the Mariners
On Friday afternoon, Jon Morosi of MLB.com reported that former Orioles’ righty Shintaro Fujinami had come to terms on a one-year, minor league contract with the Mariners.
The deal includes an invite to spring training.
Fujinami came over from Japan ahead of the 2023 season, initially signing with the Oakland A’s. He didn’t last long there, however.
Fujinami threw just 49.1 innings while struggling to an 8.57 ERA with the A’s before being shipped to the Orioles at the 2023 trade deadline.
He’d go on to throw 29.2 innings with Baltimore down the stretch and helped the O’s to an AL East title.
Fujinami wasn’t particularly impressive during his time in Baltimore, however.
His fastball averaged 98.3 mph but he just couldn’t control it and keep it in the zone, and batters took advantage of him.
He was able to cut his ERA down to 4.85 in Baltimore, but the 4.13 FIP just wasn’t encouraging enough. Fujinami left Baltimore at the end of 2023 and wound up with the Mets in 2024.
Former Orioles reliever Shintaro Fujinami lands with the Mariners on a minor league deal
What the Mets saw was a guy with an overpowering fastball, but shaky command, who with the right set of adjustments could become a shut-down reliever.
What they got was more of the same Fujinami that we’d seen in 2023.
Fujinami spent almost all of last year with the Triple-A Syracuse Mets, where he again struggled to a 6.68 ERA in 32.1 innings. He struck out over 25% of the batters he faced, but he did so with a dismal 22.3% walk rate. And no, that’s not a typo.
While Fujinami seemingly still has the raw stuff to be a successful major league reliever, he just hasn’t been able to find the strike zone consistently.
He ran a walk rate of 12.6% in the majors in 2023 and obviously took a turn for the worse in that regard last year. That’s just an untenable mark, and he’ll unfortunately never be successful if he can’t limit free passes.
One benefit he’ll have in heading to Seattle is that the Mariners’ development team has been quite successful putting together the bullpen over there, and consistently getting production from unexpected sources.
It’s possible that they’ll find a way to unlock Fujinami and turn him into a successful major leaguer.
He’s still just 30 years old so there’s plenty of time for him to find a way to figure it out.
