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By far, the biggest baseball news of the entire season was the August 23 announcement of Shohei Ohtani’s right elbow injury, which could necessitate a second Tommy John surgery for the Los Angeles Angels’ two-way megastar.
We won’t rehash the details here. But since it was announced on August 23, Ohtani’s injury, the drama surrounding it, and what effect it will have on his upcoming free agency have dominated the news. It also overshadowed his brilliant performance in August, as well as the solid performances of several other Japanese imports in Major League Baseball.
Let’s begin with Ohtani. As a designated hitter during August, he averaged .316 with five home runs, 14 RBIs, and a 1.004 OPS. He made three pitching starts, including the one against Cincinnati on August 23 that he left after 1.1 innings because of “arm fatigue”. He allowed just six hits and no earned runs during those outings.
For the season, he is 10-5 as a pitcher with a 3.14 ERA and 1.06 WHIP. On the batting side, he finished August with an overall .307 average and MLB-leading figures of 44 home runs, a .661 slugging percentage, and a 1.071 OPS. He also had 95 RBIs, sixth best in MLB, as of August 30.
At this point, the plan is for him to continue hitting, at least until he gets a second opinion on the torn ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow. So far, that has worked well, as he was 9-27 from the time of the injury announcement through the end of the month.
Now to the other seven import players.
Yusei Kikuchi
Kikuchi has had bouts of inconsistency this season but has now had three consecutive solid months for the Toronto Blue Jays after going 1-1 with a 3.03 ERA and 1.04 WHIP in August. Plus, he walked just five batters in 29.2 innings.
Following a very good April performance, he fell off in May with a 5.83 ERA and a bloated 1.67 WHIP. However, he rebounded very well in June and followed that with a 1-1 mark and 3.91 ERA in July.
In his first four seasons in MLB – three with Seattle and one with Toronto – Kikuchi had not been able to harness his elite stuff, posting a 5.02 ERA. By the end of August, however, he was 9-4 with a 3.63 ERA and 1.23 WHIP, the latter significantly lower than his career mark of 1.38. In addition, he has an average walk rate of 2.46 per nine innings, compared to his career mark of 3.39 and last season’s bloated 5.19. In short, he has been better than expected.
In mid-July, it was speculated that Kikuchi would assume more of a swingman role when the Blue Jays’ rotation returned to full health. However, all his appearances thus far have been as a starter.
Seiya Suzuki
For much of his second season in MLB with the Chicago Cubs, Suzuki has not had the success he or the team had hoped for, but August may have signaled a breakthrough, as he hit .321 with a 1.006 OPS and had eight multi-hit games. This, despite going 0-10 on his last three games of the month.
Suzuki had averaged .319 in May while hitting five home runs and driving in 13 runs, but he hit just .254 in April, .177 in June, and .240 in July. He had shown occasional flashes, such as a four-hit effort and a couple of three-hit games in July, but hadn’t been able to sustain success.
After his four-hit game on July 18, Cubs manager David Ross said. “He’s got one of the best swings in the league. When you watch him, the consistency with that timing, when it’s there, he feels really good. Hopefully he can build off today.”
However, Suzuki batted just .191 between then and the end of the month. Between June 15 and August 7, he posted a .207/.268/.307 slash line in 150 at-bats. Since then, though, he’s been on a tear, averaging .362 to raise his season mark to .263, with 13 home runs, 48 RBI, and a .768 OPS.
Kodai Senga
Senga has been another with inconsistent performances, but he has proven in his first MLB season to be a valuable performer and a bright spot in what has been a very disappointing season for the New York Mets.
July was his best month by far, as he posted a 1.93 earned-run average, allowed just 13 hits in 23.1 innings, and posted a WHIP and batting average against of just 0.87 and .165, respectively. He followed that with a solid August, in which he was 3-2 with a 3.16 earned-run mark and 34 strikeouts in 31.1 innings.
During much of the season, he has had problems with his command and with getting ahead in counts, particularly in road games, but he’s done better lately. In the April/May/June time frame, he averaged 5.09 walks per nine innings. In July and August, he averaged just 3.0.
For the season, he is 10-7 with a 3.17 earned-run mark and 1.24 WHIP.
Kenta Maeda
Maeda had a difficult beginning to his first season after undergoing Tommy John surgery in September 2021, but there is reason for optimism after he came back from the Injured List and spent time in AAA on a rehab assignment. After returning to the Twins, he had two effective starts in June, a strong July, and an up-and-down August.
On June 23, he made his first MLB start for Minnesota since April 26 and went five strong innings against Detroit, allowing no runs, three hits, and striking out eight. He followed that on June 28 with a solid performance (5 innings, five hits, two runs) in a loss to Atlanta.
He then had a strong July performance, with four quality starts in five outings, and followed that by going 1-1 in August with a 5.04 earned-run average, much of that due to his start against Cleveland on August 28 when he gave up six earned runs in four innings. He walked just five batters in 25 innings during the month but allowed six home runs.
If Maeda can finish strongly, it will give a boost to the Twins, who had a five-game lead in the American League Central Division as of August 31.
Seasonally, Maeda stands 3-7 with a 4.69 ERA and 1.21 WHIP.
Masataka Yoshida
Though he has mostly been proving his doubters wrong in his first MLB season with the Boston Red Sox, Yoshida has been inconsistent on a monthly basis, and that continued in August. He batted just .261 with a .281 on-base percentage and .359 slugging mark during the month after averaging .314 in July with an .844 OPS. He had begun the season by hitting .265 in April and followed that with a .354 mark in May and .269 in June.
Yoshida got just nine hits in his last 40 at-bats in August, and his OPS has dropped significantly since the All-Star break.
For the season, he is still averaging .295 with 13 home runs, 62 RBIs, and an .805 OPS, and he has been effective against both right-handed and left-handed pitchers. A left-handed batter, he was averaging .299 against righthanded pitchers and .282 versus lefties, as of August 31.
Yu Darvish
Like San Diego as a team, Darvish has not lived up to expectations this season, particularly in the light of the $108 million contract extension he signed earlier this year. And his season took another hit on August 28 when he was placed on the 15-day Injured List because of right elbow inflammation. Later, he was diagnosed with a bone spur in the elbow and given a cortisone shot.
Darvish referred to the issue as “discomfort” and said he expects to be back on the mound before the end of the regular season, but it is another blow to the Padres’ rapidly shrinking chances of making the playoffs. Darvish revealed that he’d been pitching through discomfort for “a couple months.” He was removed after just 76 pitches against Milwaukee on August 25, and his post-start soreness didn’t go away as it usually does.
Darvish was decent in April and had five quality starts in his first seven outings, but he posted a 5.74 earned-run mark in May, an ERA of 5.40 in his four starts in June, and followed that with an inconsistent July in which he was very good in three of his five starts and not so good in the other two.
His August performance was much the same. In his first two starts, against the Los Angeles Dodgers and Seattle Mariners, he allowed just 11 hits, two walks, and two earned runs in 13 innings. In his next three, however, he gave up 23 hits and 13 earned runs in 16 innings.
For the season, Darvish is 8-10 with a 4.56 ERA and 1.30 WHIP. The latter mark is his highest since the 2018 season and the second-highest of his 11-year MLB career.
Shintaro Fujinami
Fujinami, who signed a one-year contract with Oakland prior to the season, was traded to the Baltimore Orioles on July 19 and activated two days later. His performance has been spotty, with some good moments mixed with the not-so-good.
Despite a sometimes-triple-digit fastball, he was hit hard at the beginning of the season and moved to the bullpen in late April. He improved significantly in June and July after posting ERAs of 13.00 in April and 10.50 in May, but he’s remained inconsistent since joining Baltimore. In 13 appearances in August, he posted a 5.68 earned-run mark, though his 0.77 WHIP was by far his best of the season. He allowed zero earned runs in nine of his 13 outings, but, in the other four, gave up eight earned runs in just 3.1 innings.
“If we can get him over the plate, it’s going to be a huge weapon for us,” manager Brandon Hyde said after Fujinami got his first career save on August 16. “He’s got unbelievable stuff, and we’ve seen that.”
For the season, Fujinami is 6-8 with a 7.64 earned-run mark and a very high 1.52 WHIP in 68.1 innings.
