It is always interesting when players from Japan sign a Major League Baseball contract.
Some of the players become instant superstars, while others take some more time to adapt to the skill level in the MLB.
The player everybody most likely thinks about when they hear this is Shohei Ohtani.
This offseason, another Japanese pitcher will come over to the MLB.
According to B/R Walk-Off on ‘X,’ Tomoyuki Sugano will sign with an MLB team this winter as an international free agent.
Righty Tomoyuki Sugano will sign with an MLB team as an international free agent this winter, per @JeffPassan pic.twitter.com/NanCoYBbI1
— B/R Walk-Off (@BRWalkoff) October 4, 2024
Sugano is a 34-year-old right-handed pitcher from Japan who has been playing over there since 2013.
His 2024 season for the Yomiuri Giants out of Tokyo included a record of 15 wins and 3 losses in 24 games with a 1.67 earned run average and 111 strikeouts in 156.2 innings pitched.
Overall, he has a 2.45 earned run average in his career, and it will be interesting to see how his stuff transfers over to Major League Baseball.
Other big names in today’s game to come from Japan include Yu Darvish, Shota Imanaga, Masataka Yoshida, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
Yamamoto is a rookie for the Los Angeles Dodgers this season and is in line to start game 1 of the National League Division Series on Saturday.
Free agency this offseason will include big names such as Corbin Burnes, Max Fried, and Blake Snell.
Sugano adds another name to this list of players to watch this offseason to see where they all end up signing.
In the midst of the 2024 postseason, free agency will take a back seat until the World Series has concluded.
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