{"id":780577,"date":"2026-08-16T22:43:02","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T22:43:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/780577\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T22:43:02","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T22:43:02","slug":"npb-tohoku-rakuten-eagles-land-mlb-veteran-rhp-jose-urena-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/780577\/","title":{"rendered":"NPB: Tohoku Rakuten Eagles Land MLB Veteran RHP Jos\u00e9 Ure\u00f1a"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nippon Professional Baseball\u2019s Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles have signed right-hander\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/u\/urenajo01.shtml\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jose Urena<\/a>, the club officially announced.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Tohoku is merely the latest stop in what has been a well-traveled career for the 34-year-old Dominican. He has pitched for 11 Major League teams, including five in 2025 alone. Urena showed promise early in his career in Miami, peaking from 2017 to 2018 when he posted a 3.90 ERA and 100 ERA+ across 65 appearances, 59 of them\u00a0starts.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Since\u00a0departing\u00a0the Marlins after 2020, Urena bounced around the Majors as a mostly below-average depth arm. Over the past five seasons, he posted a 4.98 ERA with a similar 5.10 FIP while pitching for the Tigers, White Sox, Rockies, Brewers, Rangers, Mets, Blue Jays, Dodgers, Twins, and Angels.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>However, those numbers undersell how serviceable\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0been over the past two seasons. Since 2024, Urena has owned a 4.06 ERA in 164 innings, good for a 98 ERA+, albeit with a mediocre 4.81 FIP and only 5.7 strikeouts per 9 innings. Purely as a reliever,\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0been much better with a 3.33 ERA in 97 \u2153 frames.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>With a\u00a096 mph\u00a0average fastball, a five-pitch arsenal, and more than 1,000 MLB innings under his belt \u2013 a massive workload by NPB foreign-player standards \u2013 Rakuten is likely to use Ure\u00f1a as a starter.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Eagles fielded NPB\u2019s worst rotation last season by xFIP, a measure of a pitcher\u2019s expected home runs allowed with ballpark factors removed\u00a0 at an ugly 118, but they\u2019ve taken meaningful steps to address it this winter. Their top reliever, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/register\/player.fcgi?id=nishig000nao\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Naoto Nishiguchi<\/a>, is getting stretched out as a starter, and the club added veteran\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/m\/maedake01.shtml\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kenta Maeda<\/a>, along with Urena\u2019s countryman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/c\/contrro01.shtml\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Roansy Contreras<\/a>, to bolster the rotation. They join budding ace\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/register\/player.fcgi?id=shoji-000kot\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kota Shoji<\/a>\u00a0and southpaw\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/register\/player.fcgi?id=hayaka000tak\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Takahisa Hayakawa<\/a>, who is coming off shoulder surgery, and a slew of others as potential rotation options in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Photo: Jos\u00e9 Ure\u00f1a (54) throws to a Minnesota Twins batter during the first inning of a baseball game, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo\/Jessie Alcheh)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nippon Professional Baseball\u2019s Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles have signed right-hander\u00a0Jose Urena, the club officially announced.\u00a0 Tohoku is merely&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2302],"tags":[5,2353,2352],"class_list":["post-780577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-npb","tag-baseball","tag-nippon-professional-baseball","tag-npb"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117107609187048516","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780577","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=780577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}