In his ESPN chat, Will Carroll dropped this nugget in response to a question about the forever-injured Rocco Baldelli:
It's also going to be very attractive come June to call up Andrew Friedman and see what pitchers it would take to get Baldelli. I don't expect that team to be Boston. They're looking at Kosuke Fukudome for 2008.
So much for the Jacoby Ellsbury in Boston scenarios. Not exactly, Manny's contract runs out soon enough and Fukudome could be shifted from CF to LF in 2009, right? Assuming the Red Sox do not exercise their $20MM option on Manny for 2009 (or the same option for 2010.)
That seems to segue nicely into a Kusode Fukudome update. Going forward, I am going to be including the previous stat lines in order to get an idea how he has been doing since the previous update. The weather in Japan certainly doesn't cause the same problems it has so far in the US.
| A/O | BA | RISP | G | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | SB | SF | BB | HBP | K | E | OBP | Slug |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4/26/2007 | 0.358 | 0.438 | 23 | 81 | 20 | 29 | 6 | 0 | 7 | 20 | 1 | 2 | 17 | 2 | 18 | 1 | 0.471 | 0.691 |
| 4/16/2007 | 0.326 | 0.500 | 14 | 46 | 10 | 15 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 9 | 0 | 2 | 9 | 2 | 10 | 0 | 0.441 | 0.543 |