Empyreal Environs

Hey, it’s a baseball blog. I had to use this as a title at some point in time, right? So, I’ve gotten that cliché out of the way.

The Red Sox signed Roberto Petagine to a minor league deal today. For the last two years he has played in the NPB. He comes to the team from the Yomiuri Giants, the organization known as the Yankees of Japanese baseball. I’ve never seen any published studies of how performance in Japan translates to the MLB, but there must be some sort of initiative in Red Sox baseball operations to vet these signings. It’s probably a matter of comparing league averages to individual players. Since this data are not readily available to us in manipulable formats, it’s not easy for the layperson to do this.

Let’s see if Petagine will be this year’s edition of Crespo.