{"id":505513,"date":"2026-01-04T20:21:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T20:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/505513\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T20:21:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T20:21:12","slug":"newest-astros-starter-tatsuya-imai-attends-texans-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/505513\/","title":{"rendered":"Newest Astros starter Tatsuya Imai attends Texans’ game"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tatsuya Imai must become engulfed in the Houston culture after signing a three-year deal with the Houston Astros.<\/p>\n

On his to-do list? Attending a Houston Texans<\/a> game was a priority.<\/p>\n

Imai, the star Japanese right-handed pitcher who recently joined the Astros, was greeted by an uproar of applause from the Texans crowd at Sunday’s matchup against the Indianapolis Colts<\/a>. Between the first and second quarter, Imai was seen sitting in the suite of owner Jim Crane, alongside agent Scott Boras.<\/p>\n

Considered the next great arm from the NPB league, Imai had a standout 2025 season for the Seibu Lions, posting a 10-5 record with a 1.92 ERA and 178 strikeouts to 45 walks in 163\u2154 innings. Known for having a five-pitch arsenal, including a “vulcan curve,” Imai should be one of the key pieces in the Astros’ rotation behind Cy Young finalist Hunter Brown.<\/p>\n

In eight seasons with Seibu, Imai went 58-45 with a 3.15 ERA, with 907 strikeouts in 963\u2154 innings. He was a three-time All-Star and lowered his ERA every season.<\/p>\n

The Texans lead 13-10 over the Colts with nine minutes remaining in the second quarter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tatsuya Imai must become engulfed in the Houston culture after signing a three-year deal with the Houston Astros.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2302],"tags":[5,9409,1858,16205,2156,38906,139,17249,13726,5289,1328,7916,17250,4,169,1082,29425,34034,2353,2352,300,316,301,1467,1064,810,939,1864,1914,185,317,16989,5848,1859],"class_list":["post-505513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-npb","tag-baseball","tag-boras","tag-breaking","tag-breaking-news-social","tag-brown","tag-colts","tag-houston","tag-houston-texans","tag-hub","tag-hunter","tag-hunter-brown","tag-indianapolis","tag-indianapolis-colts","tag-mlb","tag-news","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-hub","tag-nippon","tag-nippon-professional-baseball","tag-npb","tag-overall","tag-overall-positive","tag-positive","tag-professional","tag-scott","tag-scott-boras","tag-smg","tag-smg-breaking-wire","tag-social","tag-sports","tag-sports-news","tag-texans","tag-tx","tag-wire"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115838693098916769","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505513","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=505513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}