Once the Los Angeles Dodgers won their second consecutive World Series championship and Yoshinobu Yamamoto was named MVP, Philadelphia Phillies fans everywhere were reminded that it was their team that offered him the most money when he was coming stateside from Japan.
But ultimately, he chose to sign with the Dodgers. And based on how incredible he’s been during his short MLB career thus far, that is going to sting the Phillies for a long time.
It’s also not been a secret that Philadelphia has had a hard time cracking into the Japanese market. While they signed Koyo Aoyagi in January of this year, he never made their MLB roster before being released. So the Phillies still haven’t signed a player directly out of Japan.
That’s why Philadelphia should sign Shota Imanaga this offseason after the Chicago Cubs shockingly decided to not pick up his three-year, $57 million club option that would have kept him in the Windy City from 2026-28, as was reported by Jesse Rogers of ESPN.
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If the Phillies are ever going to become real players in Japan like they are hoping for, then they have to add a notable figure. While Imanaga isn’t on the same level of notoriety like Yamamoto, Shohei Ohtani or Yu Darvish, he is still a popular figure based on what he did during his time in Nippon Professional Baseball and for Team Japan.
Signing Imanaga would put Philadelphia on the map when it comes to Japanese players, which is something they desperately need after Ohtani only visited the city to see the Rocky statue, Roki Sasaki wasn’t even interested in taking a meeting with the team and Yamamoto went elsewhere for less money.
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The other thing when it comes to potentially adding Imanaga is that he would be an effective starting arm for the Phillies. At the age of 31, while he took a step back this year compared to what he did a season prior, there is reason to believe his best days are ahead of him if he were to work with pitching coach Caleb Cotham.
After posting a 2.91 ERA across 29 starts in 2024 where he struck out 174 batters in 173 1/3 innings pitched to finish fourth in NL Rookie of the Year voting and fifth in NL Cy Young voting, he wasn’t the same guy this year with a 3.73 ERA across 25 starts.
Injuries played a factor in that, but also the underlying metrics were much worse during his second year of major league action. Following a season where he was above average in strikeout rate and below average in walk rate, hard hit percentage and barrel rate, he was in the 34th percentile this year when it came to K rate, the 24th percentile when it came to hard hit rate and the sixth percentile when it came to barrel rate.
Those increases might sound alarming — and it might have caused the Cubs to move on from him — but it should be noted that he still finished with an ERA below the 4.00 mark and had a WHIP of 0.99, which shows he was still an effective starting pitcher.
So with the Phillies still searching for a way to crack into the Japanese market and likely needing to replace Ranger Suarez in free agency, signing Imanaga would achieve two goals at once and should be something the front office seriously considers.