{"id":16181,"date":"2025-05-10T14:49:17","date_gmt":"2025-05-10T14:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/16181\/"},"modified":"2025-05-10T14:49:17","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T14:49:17","slug":"npbs-nippon-ham-fighters-re-sign-drew-verhagen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/16181\/","title":{"rendered":"NPB&#8217;s Nippon-Ham Fighters Re-Sign Drew VerHagen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters in Japan <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/FightersPR\/status\/1871782938851123462\" rel=\"nofollow\">announced<\/a> yesterday that they\u2019re bringing back righty\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/v\/verhadr01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-12-26_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Drew VerHagen<\/a> on a one-year deal. The Vayner Sports client first joined the Fighters on a one-year contract with a 2025 player option last winter. While it seems he explored free agent possibilities in lieu of the player option, he elected to return to Hokkaido all the same.<\/p>\n<p>VerHagen divided the \u201924 season between the Fighters and their minor league affiliate. He posted similarly solid numbers at both stops. The 34-year-old tossed 49 innings of 3.12 ERA ball at Japan\u2019s top level and managed a 3.06 mark across 47 minor league frames. He fanned a slightly above-average 20.6% of NPB opponents against a 5% walk rate.<\/p>\n<p>That was VerHagen\u2019s third season with the Fighters overall. He pitched for the team between 2020-21 and now carries a 3.44 earned run average in 256 2\/3 NPB innings. Around the separate stints in Japan, he has appeared in parts of eight MLB campaigns. VerHagen worked as long reliever for the Tigers between 2014-19. He returned to the majors in 2022 for a two-season run with the Cardinals. After posting a 6.65 ERA during his first year in St. Louis, he rebounded with a 3.98 mark across a career-high 61 innings in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters in Japan announced yesterday that they\u2019re bringing back righty\u00a0Drew VerHagen on a one-year deal.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2302],"tags":[5,8117,2353,2352],"class_list":{"0":"post-16181","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-npb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-drew-verhagen","10":"tag-nippon-professional-baseball","11":"tag-npb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}