Of the three candidates, Taiwan’s Hong-Chih Kuo is the most conventional and expected arm. Despite being a lefty, Kuo has long been considered a good endgame option, and only health and the presence of more established options have kept him away from that role.

This year, one of the many disappointments on Joe Torre’s Dodgers has been the collapse of Jonathan Broxton, whose inability to slam the door on opponents gave Kuo the chance he needed. Although Broxton’s 3.66 ERA, 1.31 WHIP, and 10.8 K/9 are all respectable numbers, they are all career worsts, or at least lows not seen since his rookie season in 2005.

Ever since mid-August, Joe Torre has looked more and more to Kuo, who is putting up the best primary numbers of his career: a 1.36 ERA and 0.81 WHIP are eye-popping, though he’s done better than the 10.2 K/9 and 3.53 K/B rates before. What he’s done particularly well is shut down opposing lefties, who can only muster a .105/.161/.123 line against him—righties can’t crow all that much with their .157/.241/.228 line, but it looks positively Ruthian in comparison.

Kuo’s velocity is also at career highs, as his average fastball velocity of 94.2 MPH is equaled to last year’s all-time best for him, while he’s never averaged 86.8 in his slider before. That’s the sort of repertoire you expect from a closer, but it’s something his fellow Asian stoppers don’t share.

Hisanori Takahashi is another lefty with a fastball and slider in his repertoire, but that’s where any similarities with Kuo end. Takahashi’s heater tops out in the high eighties, while his slider tickles the lower eighties, and he mixes in both a great change with screwball action and a decent curve to keep batters guessing.

When the Mets signed him before this season, they were hoping for a lefty specialist or serviceable bullpen arm, as the 35-year-old had bounced from the rotation to relief in Japan. A series of up-and-down seasons culminated in a 2009 campaign for the mighty Yomiuri Giants when he finished with a 10-6 record, a 2.94 ERA and a middling 7.9 K/9 (NPB veterans tend to enjoy higher strikeout rates from friendly umpires).

Takahashi did well in the Mets’ relief corps until mid-May, when Jonathon Niese hit the DL, and stuck while Niese swapped DL spots with Oliver Perez. Takahashi stuck in the rotation through July, but underwhelmed with a 5.01 ERA and 1.45 WHIP, despite a decent 7.5 K/9. He slipped back into the bullpen for a few weeks, until K-Rod went from trying to K batters to trying to KO his father-in-law.

Initially part of a closer-by-committee (which is really a euphemism for “undecided manager”), Takahashi got the first opportunity to close, converting the save on August 16, and hasn’t missed a chance yet. Jerry Manuel recently named Takahashi as his team’s closer for the rest of the season, making Takahashi one of the most surprising pitching imports in recent years.

Koji Uehara, on the other hand, was expected to shine, and using him as a closer was always a backup plan for the Orioles when they signed him. In Japan, Uehara had moved from the rotation to the bullpen in 2007 and parts of 2008. He was great in his full-year stint, picking up 32 saves and registering the best K/9 of his career, at 9.6.

But he preferred the rotation, and that’s where Baltimore tried to keep him in 2009. Only Uehara proved too fragile, so he began 2010 in the ‘pen—with Mike Gonzalez ahead of him, Uehara worked in a setup role in May before succumbing to yet another injury, this time an elbow strain that shelved him for more than a month.

By the time Uehara returned, the equally fragile Gonzalez was on the DL and Alfredo Simon sat ahead of him in the pecking order. Simon, inconsistent at the best of times, soon pitched himself out of the spot, but Gonzalez seemed to be ahead of Uehara.

New manager Buck Showalter gave Uehara the first shot at the role and he, like Takahashi, never let it go. He has converted 8 of 9 save opportunities, and Showalter is now hinting that Uehara could be The Man in 2011, too. What’s most surprising about this, as BP’s Ben Lindbergh points out, is that Uehara possesses by far the slowest fastball of any closer in the game.

Uehara’s repertoire consists of a tepid heater that’s lucky to hit 90, averaging 87.8 MPH, but he uses that to set up his change and splitter, which together make up about 25% of his pitches. The occasional cutter keeps hitters off balance but, like Trevor Hoffman, Uehara seems to dazzle hitters by using the low end of the radar gun range.

What seems to unite all three of these closers is their mold-breaking approach. Whether it’s a fireballing lefty like Kuo, a moderately slower lefty like Takahashi, or a snail’s-pace, pitching-on-guts-and-guile Uehara, each has exceeded (or realized) expectations to become the man their teams depend on to slam the door on the opposition.

Many sabermetricians will argue that there is no true “closer profile,” no set of tools that say, “This dude has to be the closer.” This stands in direct opposition to conventional baseball wisdom, which says a closer has to be a righty with a dominating heater-slider—or on occasion a sinker-slider—combo. Instead, these three pitchers show that any guy with some maturity, courage and ability can assume ninth-inning duties, no matter how fast his heater is, which side of the rubber he toes, or which side of the Pacific he was born on.

About the only good thing that Los Angeles could say about Matsui was that he was playing every day (health was a big concern in his signing) and Godzilla looked just as much like a menacing, slightly hung-over bulldog in an Angels uniform as he did in Yankee pinstripes. Then Matsui went on a tear, hitting .298/.388/.567 in 121 PAs since July 18, including 7 HR and 24 RBI, to drag his average into respectable territory.

If Matsui finishes 2010 hitting .262/.345/.438, it would be still his worst season ever in the first two slash categories—BA and OBP—and his third-worst in SLG, an eyelash behind his rookie year .435 and well short of 2008’s .424. It says a lot that we’re comparing his power in 2010 to either his first year in the majors or a season when his knees were so bad that he missed a month and had to undergo offseason surgery afterwards. No matter how you slice it, it’s been a disappointing season for Matsui, unless he can keep up his current torrid pace.

Why is Matsu’s production is? Since he hit started 2010 by hitting .273/.350/.477, you can’t even write 2010 off to the “Older players warm up slowly” argument. It also doesn’t seem to be luck. His .293 BABIP is a bit below his .303 career average, indicating a touch of bad luck, but he had last year’s line (see his Rotolympus card above) with a BABIP of just .273.

Furthermore, his 12.4% HR/FB is near his 13.2% average, while his 42.3% flyball rate is above his 36.8% career rate—yet it’s in line with his FB rates every year since 2006, leaving out that knee-weakened 2008. Overall, his other hitting trajectories look consistent with his approach in the recent past.

But he has definitely suffered from strikeouts in 2010. His 21.8% whiff rate is well above his career 15.3% and seems to be part of a three-year rise, from 10.1% in 2008 to 16.4% in ‘09. Digging deeper, his lack of contact seems to come from an odd reversal, as his 72.8% contact rate on pitches outside the zone is better than it’s ever been, while his 88.8% contact rate on pitches inside the zone would be his second-worst ever. Because his 22.6% swing rate on pitches outside the zone are also a career high, it looks like he’s going fishing too much; those, too, are part of a sharp uptick in that department since 2007.

That notion of going fishing is supported by the fact that only 44.9% of all pitches he sees are strikes, indicating that pitchers are offering him plenty of bait. And why shouldn’t they? His protection this year in the batting order has mostly been Juan Rivera, who’s hitting a career-worst .249/.301/.403—though Kendry Morales also protected him, and he flailed then, too. More likely, they’re recognizing his tendency to swing at balls outside the zone and exploiting it, perhaps luring him off the plate before finishing him off with a swift strike down the middle.

And if anyone’s dangling bait in front of Godzilla, it’s probably a southpaw. The real soft spot in Matsui’s game this year has been his lefty splits. Never strongly biased against them in his career (.290/.376/.486 vs. RHP, .284/.348/.458 vs. LHP), Matsui is hitting .203/.240/.398 off of fellow southpaws, but handling righties at a more typical level of .285/.383/.454.

He’s lost SLG against both flavors of pitchers, but that diminished BA and OBP against lefties come from his 28% strikeout rate against them,  far and away his most futile performance ever, well above both 2006’s 18.9% and his career 17.2% rates. His 4.8% walk rate against LHP is also the lowest ever for him, so he’s clearly not seeing them well.

Matsui’s 19.0% K% rate against RHP is lower than his usual 14.4%, but the differential is not nearly as shocking; his 13.6% walk rate off of them is actually among the best in his career. So it doesn’t seem to be fading overall skills for the 36-year-old Godzilla; his vision seems to be fuzzier only against lefties.

And they, evidently aware of this hole in Matsui’s game, are feeding him more and more pitches outside the zone, waiting for him to fan himself. If the Angels are going to recoup any part of their investment in him—or if Matsui hopes to approach his $6M payday from Los Angeles when he hits free agency this offseason—they’ll need to improve his vision against lefties or sink him into a platoon. With the AL West pretty much out of reach and September callups arriving, I’m betting on the latter.

Pitchers are a much shallower pool. Danny Graves, a Vietnamese-American, is one of the standout Asian-American pitchers in recent years, but another two seem to be putting it together this season, while a third soldiers on, having a bounceback year with his 10th organization.

1. Brandon League, a fourth-generation Japanese-American, flashed a fastball that pushed triple digits for Toronto, but—as is often the tale with hard-throwers—he didn’t really come into his own until he refined his change of pace. He’d used a changeup before last season, when he finally got the feel for the splitter, and everything seemed to fall into place. His 3.16 xFIP in 2009 was a career high, while his 3.58 FIP was a close second to his 3.55 FIP in 2006.

Those improvements came courtesy of the drop in walks and rise in strikeouts you see above. Seattle traded for him in the offseason, and he’s continued that success, albeit at a slightly decreased level. In 2010, his walk rate has risen a notch, while his Ks have dropped, but the superior Seattle defense—as well as the grass infield at Safeco—lopped a hit per 9 IP off his average and plunged his BABIP from .322 in 2009 to .260 in 2010.

Though the team around him has floundered, League has become a fixture in the Mariners’ pen and the likely successor to Aardsma, should anything happen to Seattle’s closer. He should be proud to continue the Asian-American relief tradition established by Graves.

2. Like League, Jeremy Guthrie is also of Japanese descent and showed promise for years, thanks to a fastball in the mid-90s and a good slider with late movement. In 2007-8, he had two good years, with a cumulative 6.0 K/9 and 2.6 BB/9, leading to an overall 3.66 ERA and 1.22 WHIP. Though Baltimore thought they had their ace, Guthrie’s peripherals didn’t support this, as FIPS of 4.41 and 4.35 in 2007 and 2008, respectively, indicate.

2009 saw him give back all these gains, as he led the league with 17 losses, his FIP ballooned to 5.31 and his strikeout rate slipped back again. A more normal .294 BABIP (after two seasons of .277 and .267) led to the bloated ERA and WHIP in his Rotolympus card. But 2010 has seen him return to adequacy, with a recent stretch of games that could indicate he’s putting it together.

His overall peripherals are improved since 2009, with his reduced 4.58 FIP coming from a lower walk rate, even as his K rate has continued to fall, too. A friendly .264 BABIP and 5.00 xFIP show that he’s been aided by some luck, but a better indicator could come from his groundball rates, which returned to 41.9% in 2010 after a plunge to 34.7% in 2009.

All six of his most recent starts have been quality starts, and he’s bumped his strikeout rate to 5.2 K/9, and his walks have dropped to a teeny 1.5 BB/9. That’s all led to a 1.51 ERA and a 0.94 WHIP and a 4-2 record. Whether this will continue or not remains to be seen, but Guthrie has at least returned to serviceable levels.

3. “Serviceable” pretty much defines Bruce Chen’s career, though there were times when the Panamanian-born Chinese-American would have loved to have reached even those underwhelming levels. Veteran of 12 seasons and a Mike-Morgan-like 10 teams, Chen had a few good seasons in Atlanta before bouncing around; between 2000 and 2003, he played for at least two teams each season.

Suddenly, he seemed to settle down in Baltimore, where he stuck for three straight seasons, with a strong 15-11 record his first two years there, with a 3.67 ERA and 1.25 WHIP, before collapsing to a 0-7 record in 2006, his ERA ballooning to 6.93 and his WHIP shooting to an unsightly 1.74. The TJS that ended his 2007 and 2008 seasons explained this, and 2009 saw him climb his way back to the majors after rehab.

In 2010, Chen has had some glimpses of excellence, like when he carried a perfect game into the 7th inning against the Angels on July 4. But he’s also had reminders of the old, awful Chen, like the four starts where he’s given up 4 or more runs, including three of them after that near-perfecto.

But overall, he’s been solid: his 4.51 FIP is his best since 2000, while his 4.97 xFIP is his best since 2005; the latter points to the favorable 8.1% FB/HR rate he’s enjoyed this season. His K/9 is his best since 2003, though his BB/9 leaves something to be desired. If nothing else, Chen proves that a crafty lefty (his fastball tops out in the mid-80s) can come from any country.

Next week: the Asian-American hitters, including the recently promoted Darwin Barney!