Mets and Dodgers Finalists on Hisanori Takahashi

According to Ken Davidoff on twitter, Nippon Sports is reporting that Takahashi will sign a minor league deal with either the Mets or the Dodgers.

I guess that means either the Mets beefed up their offer since it was reported they and the Orioles were rejected, or the original report was wrong.  Regardless it'd be nice to bring another lefty into the mix for spring training, who could potentially help take the load off of Feliciano a bit during the regular season.  Apparently this guy has a screwball, which is tough for lefties to hit coming from the left-side.  I can't say that won't be useful against the left-handed heavy power of the Phillies line-up.  This could potentially be a very important move should the Mets be able to pull it off...

UPDATE:

Some information relayed by Metsblog.com, here, about Roch Kubatko of MASNSports.com, here, discussing Takahashi.  In the article Kubatko references this scouting report that says the screwball is Takahashi's best pitch, but last year lefties hit .300 against him.  That doesn't sound too promising for a lefty specialist, maybe they've just seen his screwball too much...eh...