Orioles Interested in Tsuyoshi Nishioka

The following is an article on SeattlePI, about how several teams, including the Orioles, are interested in Japanese shortstop Tsuyoshi Nishioka, who hit .346 with 206 hits last season in the Nippon Professional Baseball league last year:

Posting Window for Nishioka Closes Tuesday

A few things about Nishioka and the Orioles:

• Obviously for the O's, acquiring a shortstop who could hit, much less win a league batting championship, would be a major coup.
• Baltimore pretty much has to look outside the organization, as they don't have a solid internal candidate.
• Nishioka, a switch hitter who's only 26 years old, would in theory be a very nice addition. 
• He owns a career .293 batting average, and last season led the Nippon league in games, runs, hits, total bases, and average.
• According to the article, his 206 hits were the most in the league since Ichiro in 1994.
• He can play both second and short, and pretty well, supposedly. In 2005 he split time at both, and actually won Japan's version of the "All-Pro" award at short, and the gold glove at second base. 
• In total, he's a 5 time All-Star with 3 gold gloves.
• The "Posting Fee" (which gives a team exclusive rights to negotiate with the player, but does NOT guarantee that he'll sign) hasn't been announced, but Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports noted that it could be as much as $15-20 million, with a weak free-agent class at shortstop.

A slightly different viewpoint, and a few more things to think about:

• I've seen several sources who refer to him as "injury prone", despite the fact (see above) that he led the league in games played last year.
• He's played extensively for Bobby Valentine (pro league and in the WBC), so his idea of the "typical" American is more than likely slanted.
• A few years back, he went exclusively by his first name for awhile. I'm not saying that people organically referred to him that way (eg, Kobe, Shaq, Tiger, etc...) but that he TOLD THEM that's what they were going to call him; similiar to Ichiro, except he was doing so without quite the same pedigree. Strangely (not) it didn't go over exactly like he hoped, and he switched back the next year.

All I can say is... big ego, history of injury, big posting fee.... stinks a little bit of Kaz Matsui (for whom the Mets once moved Jose Reyes from SS to 2B). Yucky.