A buffet of juicy gossip and rumors weighed down Giants fans’s tables this Thanksgiving week. A real horn o’ plenty overflowing with speculation about San Francisco landing Japanese right-hander Tatsuya Imai, who many consider to be one of the top starting pitchers available this winter.
The Giants front office has been linked to Imai long before he was posted by the Seibu Lions this month. He fulfills a clear rotation need for San Francisco, and Posey has been more than candid about how pitching will be the main focus during the offseason. No point in getting our hopes up in November about Bo Bichette at second, or Kyle Tucker in right, only to have them go splat in January. Not only is pitching the sensible focus, it’s the easiest sell. Why wouldn’t a pitcher want to pitch in San Francisco?
So with the table set, tantalizing morsels started to amuse our dry and desperate bouches. Sonny Gray, hyped as a potential trade target, was shipped from St. Louis to Boston. Then Imai, in an interview with Daisuke Matsusaka, stated quite plainly that he viewed joining the Dodgers and his fellow countrymen as more of a cop-out than a challenge. It was a shocking take considering the recent post-championship interview by recent LA defectors, “Dumb” and “Dumber.”
A pathetic and damning display. Baseball’s competitive edge looked as dull as a plastic Bic razor. Its spirit: comatose. Future free agency months threatened to become a conveyor belt of players, looking for the path of least resistance to a ring, being stuffed into the same three tote-bags. That, of course, might still be the case, but Imai’s rebuttal to the aforementioned Knuckleheads was a relief. And if he wanted to beat ‘em, not join ‘em — wouldn’t buddying up to LA’s rivals make the most sense?
Wait, there’s more! On Wednesday, in a survey of MLB executives, the Giants came out as the team they predicted to land Imai. On Thanksgiving, the Blue Jays signed a 7-year, $210 million deal with Dylan Cease, which probably means they are out of the running for Imai. Today, it’s been widely rumored that the Mets are going all in on Framber Valdez. Suitors are dwindling. Few teams are left in the sweepstakes, and it looks like the Giants are one of them…which almost certainly means they’re screwed.
Recent history would support this pessimistic twist. Everyone sitting around the Thanksgiving turkey, from Nana to the baby, knows that the Giants are hot stove rubes, easy marks, a plot device in service of the story’s real main character. We’re not players, we get played. I’m three-quarters convinced that Imai’s stated desire to strike out Shohei Ohtani is just a clever ruse to bait LA into a higher payment package. The Dodgers’ rotation is one countrymen away from a Mount Rushmore of Japanese starting pitchers — Imai could be that countryman, he could be their Teddy Roosevelt!
Imai is almost 28 years old with 8 seasons of experience under his belt. That’s not old, but it ain’t young either especially if you want to reset your career in another league. Thinking his numbers in the NPB these past two years (2.34 ERA in ‘24, 1.92 ERA in ‘25) will translate directly into immediate outs in the Majors without a hitch is wishful, especially considering that NPB hitters are in a bit of a “dead ball” slump. Imai is not Yoshinobu Yamamoto. He’s not Roki Sasaki (which might prove to be a good thing *knock on wood*). Recent progressions in terms of command and effectiveness against left-handed batters haven’t been sustained long enough to be taken as fact. It’s reasonable and human to expect a regression and an adjustment period — it’s just do fans want to put up with that?
Then there’s the cost, which feels like it will only go up considering Cease’s $200+ payout, on top of the check the team will have to write to the Lions to cover the posting fee. Early projections around 6-years /$157 million (incl. fee) might be on the low-end, and that low-end was already pushing it for the higher-up purse handlers. There’s a real concern of that the roster at the start of the next decade will be bogged down with a bunch of 2022 Evan Longorias. The future can be a scary place, and Imai’s future could be even scarier. Can he adapt to the Major League hitters, a bigger workload, a 5-man rotation? Can he develop a better mix of secondary pitches? How long can his Slim Jim frame sustain the high-90s velocity on his fastball?
Question marks can be tools at parsing a deeper truth, or just magic wands of avoidant thinking, wee crutches to lean-on to avoid more definitive punctuation. The Rafael Devers trade had definitive punctuation. So did the Tony Vitello hire. Buster Posey is this kind of operator. Imai, maybe similarly, is the kind of player who relishes the unknown and commits to facing its challenges. If his money really is where his mouth is then the Giants should follow suit. It’d be a mistake to get shy now, fall back on cheap, short deals for high-floor, low-ceiling veterans while suffering yet another runner-up finish for a big free agent name.
We could worry ourselves into inaction about Imai, or we could revel in his possibilities. Let’s marvel at his size, at how his Slim Jim frame can generate so much zip on his fastball. Indulge the memory of another slender framed, long-haired freak, coaxing ridiculous chase out of opponents’ bats. It doesn’t take much of a cognitive leap to link Imai with our beloved Tim Lincecum (as Grant Brisbee made in his free agent profile). The two pitchers aren’t clones by any means, but they feel cut from the same cloth. Both 5’11”, both the weight of a soaked beach towel. Drape Imai in the Giants’ home cream, watch the armside run of Imai’s slider tumble in on righties much like Lincecum’s split/change once did, see how the pitch tunnels off the fastball, note the top-notch locks flowing out from beneath his hat — squint, and believe!
Imagine: Shohei Ohtani swinging wildly after an Imai slider; Freddie Freeman lock-kneed by an Imai fastball. Imagine Imai, not in a Padres uni or Yankee pinstripes, but the orange-and-black?
Yeah, I would pay to see that.