{"id":658455,"date":"2026-04-02T09:31:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T09:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/658455\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T09:31:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T09:31:16","slug":"40-million-for-franmil-reyes-guardians-fans-wonder-about-japans-npb-superstar-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/658455\/","title":{"rendered":"$40 million for Franmil Reyes? Guardians fans wonder about Japan’s NPB superstar"},"content":{"rendered":"

$40 million for Franmil Reyes? Guardians fans wonder about Japan’s NPB superstar<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

April Fools Day makes everything a little bit more confusing.<\/p>\n

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That includes news circulating Wednesday morning about former Cleveland Guardians<\/a> slugger Franmil Reyes.<\/p>\n

This was posted on X by Mike Rodriguez<\/a>, who is a usually reliable MLB insider with information about Latin American players:<\/p>\n

“According to my sources, MLB teams are actively evaluating a return for Franmil Reyes, with a deal in the $30\u201340M range over 3\u20134 years in play \u2014 whether back in MLB or staying in Nippon Professional Baseball. NPB clubs view his bat as a rare, near-generational profile. The hot start of bats like Munetaka Murakami and Kazuma Okamoto reset expectations around elite power production in Japan \u2014 reinforcing how valuable true middle-of-the-order impact has become in that environment. Reyes fits that mold with a different level of physicality and a proven track record \u2014 including multiple 30+ HR seasons across MLB and NPB \u2014 which is why evaluators see a profile that translates across both markets.”<\/p>\n

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MORE:\u00a0Terrance Gore’s son honors dad with perfect first pitch<\/a><\/p>\n

There are multiple points of confusion, though.<\/p>\n

There had been no buzz about this during the offseason, yet it showed up now only a week into the campaign.<\/p>\n

The idea of Reyes getting $10 million or more per year also has left some fans a bit confused.<\/p>\n

It would be fascinating if it’s real news, though. Reyes was always a bit of a beloved figure, particularly in Cleveland, due to his size and raw power.<\/p>\n

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Since going to Japan to play with the Nippon Ham Fighters, Reyes has 59 home runs in 239 games and an overall .891 OPS.<\/p>\n

His career MLB OPS was .775, so there’s a case to be made for bringing him back stateside.<\/p>\n

Reyes turns 31 in July, so conceptually he has some thump left in his bat.<\/p>\n

One other complicating factor — it would be unprecedented for a player to leave NPB midseason to come to MLB.<\/p>\n

So maybe it’s a joke. But there’s potentially some truth to it, too, at least in the idea that MLB teams would be open to seeing if Reyes wants to return.<\/p>\n

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More MLB news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"$40 million for Franmil Reyes? Guardians fans wonder about Japan’s NPB superstar originally appeared on The Sporting News.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2302],"tags":[5,51,3695,3685,65343,4,73,2353,2352,16006],"class_list":{"0":"post-658455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-npb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cleveland-guardians","10":"tag-franmil-reyes","11":"tag-kazuma-okamoto","12":"tag-mike-rodriguez","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-munetaka-murakami","15":"tag-nippon-professional-baseball","16":"tag-npb","17":"tag-terrance-gore"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116334420443823510","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658455","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=658455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}