The Houston Astros and star Japanese right-hander Tatsuya Imai are in agreement on a free agent contract, ESPN reported Thursday.<\/p>\n
It is a three-year deal with opt-outs that includes $54 million in \u200bguarantees and could be worth up \u200dto $63 million, \u2060per the report.<\/p>\n
It would \u200dbe the third-largest deal ever in terms of average annual value for a Japanese pitcher behind Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who signed a 12-year, $325 \u200dmillion deal (for an average annual value of $27.1 million) with the Los Angeles Dodgers in late 2023, and Masahiro Tanaka, who \u200csigned a seven-year, $155 million deal (average of $22.1 million) with the New \u200bYork Yankees \u200cin 2014.<\/p>\n
Imai, 27, was a \u200cthree-time All-Star in eight seasons with \u200bthe Pacific League’s \u200cSeibu Lions.<\/p>\n
He finished 10-5 with a 1.92 ERA in 24 games in 2025, striking out 178 batters in 163\u2154 innings.<\/p>\n
Imai, who is listed at 180 centimeters and 70 kilograms, was routinely clocked around 93-95 mph (150-153 kph) with his \u200dfastball \u200dlast season. Identifiable by his flowing brown hair, Imai also throws a \u200dsinker and slider and was projected to be a No. 2 or No. 3 starter at the MLB level.<\/p>\n
The New \u200cYork Yankees, Seattle Mariners, San Francisco Giants, Toronto Blue Jays, Chicago Cubs and Atlanta Braves were said to be among teams interested in signing Imai.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Houston Astros and star Japanese right-hander Tatsuya Imai are in agreement on a free agent contract, ESPN…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2389],"tags":[42,5,139,54,3211,4,3944,4658],"class_list":{"0":"post-502238","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-astros","8":"tag-astros","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-houston","11":"tag-houston-astros","12":"tag-houstonastros","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-seibu-lions","15":"tag-tatsuya-imai"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115822870095446773","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502238","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=502238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}