Here is a flowchart to determine whether you should be excited about the Japanese free agents coming to MLB this offseason:
Has your team signed one of them? Then hell yeah, brother, always root for your guys. The Chicago White Sox taking a swing on Munetaka Murakami was enough for my recently buried fandom to poke at least one finger out of the grave.
Has a hated rival signed one of them? Whether the player busts or succeeds, you can look forward to either gleeful vindictiveness or a new guy to resent.
Has a team you are totally ambivalent about signed one of them? Well, it gets a little bit more complicated.
In the past couple of years, MLB has been spoiled by the talent posted from Japan. In the offseason prior to 2024, the Los Angeles Dodgers signed ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who did what he did in the playoffs last year, and the Chicago Cubs signed pitcher Shota Imanaga, who had a great debut season. The Roki Sasaki sweepstakes were a highlight of the offseason prior to 2025, before Sasaki went, inevitably, to the Dodgers. If that is your standard, then this year's cohort—Munetaka Murakami, Tatsuya Imai, Kazuma Okamoto—will evoke less excitement in comparison, at least until the World Baseball Classic rolls around.
For one, two of them are batters, not pitchers. As someone who generally understands pitching better than hitting, I am naturally biased toward cool pitching; also, coming from NPB's dead-ball environs, pitchers tend to be the ones with flashier statistics and the more successful crossover performers (delightfully, Shohei Ohtani is both a pillar of this rule and the exception that proves it). Yamamoto recorded a 1.16 ERA the year before he came to MLB; Ohtani posted a .942 OPS, which, using a rough basis for comparison, is a lower mark than five of his eight MLB seasons.
Murakami is a noteworthy exemplar of this phenomenon. The 25-year-old left-handed first baseman posted a 1.051 OPS last year, holds the single-season home run record in NPB, and, despite all that, only signed a two-year, $34 million contract with the Chicago White Sox. Look just a little deeper, and there are some red banners in Murakami's underlying statistics. He hits the ball hard, but his strikeout rates have steadily crept up since his 2022 record-breaking season, and his contact rate for balls in the zone (in NPB's relatively lower-velocity environment) would be first percentile in MLB. The Athletic writer Eno Sarris placed his max exit velocity and contact rate in context, and the resultant comps are a bit gnarly: your classic Joey Gallo–Bobby Dalbec type hitter.
As Sarris acknowledges, Ohtani came over with similar contact metrics, albeit three years younger. But there remains some overarching concern that Murakami simply will not work with MLB pitch velocity. The good news is that he will be working with White Sox player development.
By contrast, Okamoto is nearly 30, but theoretically has the higher floor. Due to injury, he only played 77 games last year, but slashed .322/.411/.581 in that sample. The Toronto Blue Jays are notably in a position to hand out a relatively modest four-year, $60 million deal for an infielder like Okamoto, who fits their contact-happy batting profile. According to Eric Longenhagen at FanGraphs, during Okamoto's 2024 season, he only struck out 15.9 percent of the time, and during his shortened 2025 season, he only struck out 11.3 percent of the time. The Blue Jays, whose postseason run was dictated by their line-up depth, happen to be in a position where Okamoto does not have to be a bona fide power-hitting star, but merely an average producing infielder.
Imai is the one posted NPB pitcher who signed to an MLB team this time around. The 27-year-old recorded a 1.92 ERA last year (though note the aforementioned disclaimer about NPB statistics); primarily throws a four-seamer, slider, and changeup; and has a pitching profile like Seattle Mariners starter Luis M. Castillo. The most important part of Imai's free-agency experience was his declaration that, while he would enjoy playing alongside Ohtani, Yamamoto, and Sasaki, "winning against a team like that and becoming a world champion would be the most valuable thing in my life. If anything, I'd rather take them down." His statement shortly thereafter became a monkey's paw moment for anti-Dodgers baseball fans, as Imai signed a three-year, $54 million deal with the Houston Astros.
I've seen enough: All these guys are duds. On the other hand, if one of them had signed with the Phillies...
