Right-hander Tatsuya Imai and the Houston Astros have agreed to a $US54 million ($80m), three-year contract, a person familiar with the negotiations told The Associated Press on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the agreement had not been announced.<\/p>\n
Imai gets a $US2 million signing bonus and salaries of $US16 million this year and $18 million in each of the final two seasons.<\/p>\n
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By continuing you agree to our Terms<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n Based on his 2026 performance, his 2027 salary would escalate by $US2 million each for 80, 90 and 100 innings, and his 2028 salary by $US1 million for each level.<\/p>\n If he doesn\u2019t pitch 80 innings in 2026 and does in 2027, his 2028 salary would rise by $1 million. If he doesn\u2019t pitch 90 innings in 2026 and does in 2027, his 2028 salary would increase by another $US1 million. And if he doesn\u2019t pitch 100 innings in 2026 and does in 2027, his 2028 salary also would increase by another $US1 million.<\/p>\n Imai can opt out after the 2026 and 2027 seasons.<\/p>\n Under the posting agreement between Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball, a deal must be finalised by 5pm, Friday (US eastern standard time).<\/p>\n Imai receives the third-highest average annual value for a Japanese pitcher entering Major League Baseball behind Yoshinobu Yamamoto\u2019s $US27.08 million with the Los Angeles Dodgers in a deal that started in 2024 and Masahiro Tanaka\u2019s $2US2.14 million with the New York Yankees in a contract that ran from 2014-20.<\/p>\n A 27-year-old righty, Imai went 10-5 with a 1.92 ERA last season for the Pacific League\u2019s Seibu Lions. He struck out 178 batters in 163 2\/3 innings.<\/p>\n Imai is 58-45 with a 3.15 ERA in eight seasons with Seibu, with 907 strikeouts in 963 2\/3 innings. He is a three-time All-Star.<\/p>\n Imai pitched eight innings of a combined no-hitter against Fukuoka on April 18. He struck out 17 against Yokohama on June 17, breaking Daisuke Matsuzaka\u2019s previous team record of 16 from 2004.<\/p>\n Under MLB\u2019s posting agreement with NPB, Seibu will get a posting fee of $US9.675 million from the Astros and a supplemental fee of 15 per cent of any earned bonuses, salary escalators and exercised options.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Right-hander Tatsuya Imai and the Houston Astros have agreed to a $US54 million ($80m), three-year contract, a person…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,24932,302],"class_list":{"0":"post-502535","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-other-sports","10":"tag-sport"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115824844185440884","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502535","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=502535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}