{"id":504411,"date":"2026-01-03T20:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T20:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/504411\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T20:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T20:06:10","slug":"kazuma-okamoto-joins-short-list-of-blue-jays-signees-from-npb-in-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/504411\/","title":{"rendered":"Kazuma Okamoto joins short list of Blue Jays signees from NPB in Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kazuma Okamoto joins short list of Blue Jays signees from NPB in Japan<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Next season, third baseman Kazuma Okamoto will join a short list of Japanese players to play with the Toronto Blue Jays<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Okamoto signed a free agent contract with the Blue Jays on Saturday, according to MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand<\/a>. The 29-year-old was a six-time All-Star and led Nippon Professional Baseball’s Central League in home runs in 2020, ’21, and ’23 with the Yomiuri Giants.<\/p>\n

Former and active Japanese MLB pitchers who have suited up for the Blue Jays include Yusei Kikuchi, Ryota Igarashi, Tomo Ohka, and Micheal Nakamura. The position player group includes Gosuke Katoh, Munenori Kawasaki, and Nori Aoki.<\/p>\n

Okamoto is just the second Japanese player to sign a contract with the Blue Jays directly from NPB.<\/p>\n

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The Blue Jays’ first signing directly from NPB<\/p>\n

Toronto’s first signing directly from NPB was right-hander Shun Yamaguchi<\/a> in December 2019. The Giants posted the then 32-year-old, and he signed a two-year, $6.35 million contract with the Blue Jays.<\/p>\n

Yamaguchi was a four-time NPB All-Star and led the Central League with 188 strikeouts in 2019. He became the first Japanese player to make his MLB debut with the Blue Jays on July 27, 2020.<\/p>\n

The Blue Jays released him the following February after he allowed 23 earned runs and 28 hits in 25.2 innings. Yamaguchi returned to Yomiuri after a short minor league stint with the San Francisco Giants<\/a> and retired in 2023.<\/p>\n

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More Blue Jays News:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kazuma Okamoto joins short list of Blue Jays signees from NPB in Japan originally appeared on The Sporting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2302],"tags":[5,7420,60434,66903,5572,3685,21730,2353,66868,2352,66,66902,1414,70,3583,809],"class_list":["post-504411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-npb","tag-baseball","tag-central-league","tag-free-agent-contract","tag-gosuke-katoh","tag-japanese-players","tag-kazuma-okamoto","tag-munenori-kawasaki","tag-nippon-professional-baseball","tag-nori-aoki","tag-npb","tag-san-francisco-giants","tag-shun-yamaguchi","tag-the-blue-jays","tag-toronto-blue-jays","tag-yomiuri-giants","tag-yusei-kikuchi"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115832971844925088","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504411","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=504411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}