Situations like these are usually to the benefit of all parties. The Yankees will lose some depth, but Winans couldn’t last on their 40-man roster this offseason anyway, especially since he’s out of minor league options. Japanese teams typically pay a release fee of a few hundred thousand dollars to a player’s MLB club to facilitate the release. Winans, meanwhile, will make a lot more pitching abroad than he would on a split big-league deal that sees him bounce back and forth between Triple-A and the Majors.
Winans has pitched in each of the past three Major League seasons, albeit sparingly. He has played a total of 49 1/3 innings between Atlanta and New York, but was picked for a 7.48 ERA in that time. However, his track record in Triple-A is superlative. He spent parts of four seasons between the Braves’ best team in Gwinnett and the Yankees’ best team in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, combining for a 2.79 ERA with a 23.1% strikeout rate and a 6.9% walk rate in 355 1/3 innings.
Despite that success at the highest minor league level, Winans has been hit pretty hard in the majors. The flat 150 km/h he averages on his four-seater in the major leagues is well below average in the current era of increased speed, but is more common in NPB, where the average heat is closer to 150 km/h. Given his sharp command and strong track record in the minors, Winans should get a rotation spot in the NPB and could do quite well.
It’s becoming increasingly common for pitchers to prosper abroad and return to North America for notable free agent deals, though they typically throw harder than Winans. Pitching well in Japan could also put him in position to re-sign a more lucrative contract in subsequent seasons. There are plenty of former fringe 40-man players in the Majors who have gone abroad and enjoyed long, lucrative pitching careers in the NPB, the Korea Baseball Organization and/or the Taiwanese Chinese Professional Baseball League.
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