The Toronto Blue Jays reached an agreement with former Yomiuri Giants slugger Kazuma Okamoto, multiple outlets reported Saturday.<\/p>\n
Terms \u200bof the \u200ddeal were \u2060not immediately \u200davailable.<\/p>\n
The 45-day negotiating window for the 29-year-old infielder was set \u200dto expire on Sunday. If unsigned, he would \u200creturn to the Giants of the Central League.<\/p>\n
Okamoto, who \u200cplays third base \u200band \u200cfirst base, is a six-time All-Star in Japan, tallying 248 home runs and 717 RBIs in 1,074 career games as a mainstay in the Kyojin lineup. He has a career .277 batting average and led the Central League in home runs three times over the course of his 11 seasons in NPB.<\/p>\n
He posted six consecutive 30-homer \u200dcampaigns \u200dfrom 2018-23, including a career-high 41 in 2023. He was also \u200dpart of Japan’s World Baseball Classic championship team in 2023 \u200cand hit a home run in the final against the United States.<\/p>\n
The Blue Jays won the AL East and came within two outs of winning the World Series last year, ultimately succumbing to the Los Angeles Dodgers in a thrilling Game 7.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Toronto Blue Jays reached an agreement with former Yomiuri Giants slugger Kazuma Okamoto, multiple outlets reported Saturday.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2378],"tags":[5,377,2554,3685,4,282,70,2553,3583],"class_list":{"0":"post-504763","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-blue-jays","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-blue-jays","10":"tag-bluejays","11":"tag-kazuma-okamoto","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-toronto","14":"tag-toronto-blue-jays","15":"tag-torontobluejays","16":"tag-yomiuri-giants"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115834226247183588","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504763","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=504763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}