Breaking down the top Japanese free agents coming to MLB - ESPN

The 2025-26 offseason has yet another strong crop of Japanese players that are available in free agency — after having been posted by their respective Nippon Professional Baseball clubs — and are set to play in Major League Baseball next season.

Three main players are drawing the most attention from MLB teams: right-handed starting pitcher Tatsuya Imai and infielders Munetaka Murakami and Kazuma Okamoto.

Let's break down what to expect from each in 2026 and which teams could sign them.

The 27-year-old projects as a third starter — think an ERA in the mid-3.00s — but there's still some risk for him to even hit that projection since the big leagues are still a step up from Japan's NPB.

Imai is not that big, standing 5-foot-11, and though he has above-average control now, that hasn't always been the case. His walk rate was 5.1 BB/9 in 2022, then 4.1 in 2023, 3.6 in 2024 and 2.5 in 2025. That makes him sound like a soft tosser who gets by on his newfound feel, but his four-seam fastball sits at 93-97 mph and hits 99. There's some real stuff here, too, as his splitter is an above-average pitch by nearly any metric and his slider also performs as an above-average pitch.

I worded it that way because his slider is a unique pitch as it doesn't «slide,» or, in other words, it averages arm-side movement (like a splitter/changeup does) rather than glove side movement (like a slider/curveball does). That might sound bad, but pitching is all about deception, and hitters don't expect a slider to move like that, which is part of the reason the pitch performed well last season, garnering a 45% miss rate and a .212 xwOBA allowed.

There's also a precedent for this exact arsenal succeeding in the big leagues: Trey Yesavage. Yesavage throws