Major League Baseball

Seattle looking at Matsui as DH option

Published Dec. 6, 2010 12:00 a.m. ET

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The Seattle Mariners have interest in signing a second Japanese superstar: Hideki Matsui.

Matsui is on the team’s list of designated hitter possibilities, major-league sources told FOXSports.com Monday. The 36-year-old appears to be a good fit for the Mariners, who need power in the lineup and buzz at the box office after a 101-loss season.

The Mariners aren’t looking to spend big this winter, but they should be able to afford Matsui. He may be available on a one-year deal, after posting good-but-not-great numbers for the Los Angeles Angels in 2010: .274, 21 home runs and 84 RBIs in 145 games. He is coming off a season in which he earned a $6 million base salary.

Mariners right fielder and icon Ichiro Suzuki would approve of Matsui joining the Mariners, a person close to Ichiro said today, adding, “(Ichiro) thinks (Matsui) would help as a DH threat.” Both players are revered in Japan, and their presence in the same lineup would create great excitement on both sides of the Pacific.

Reached by email, Robert Whiting, author of "The Meaning of Ichiro" and an expert on Japanese baseball, said this about the relationship between Ichiro and Matsui:

“Ichiro is the more popular sports figure in Japan, thanks to all the batting records he has broken — which are celebrated more in Japan than they are in the U.S. The two have done magazine interviews together and seem to tolerate each other, although their personalities are different. Ichiro seems more intellectually curious than Matsui, but Matsui seems to like people — fans, reporters — more than Ichiro.

“I suspect if Matsui had his druthers, he would prefer not to play for the Mariners, because then he would have to play second fiddle to Ichiro,” Whiting said. “But if the Mariners were the only MLB team to make an offer, he would probably say yes.”

While Matsui had only one 100-RBI season among his last five, he would be a boon to a Seattle lineup that produced a major-league-worst 513 runs this year.

Matsui is probably an American League player at this stage of his career. Because of past knee injuries, many in the industry believe Matsui would prefer to avoid playing on artificial surfaces. That would make Seattle a more attractive destination than Tampa Bay or Toronto, both of whom could add a D.H. this winter.

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