MLB Rumors: Tatsuya Imai and the Houston Astros have agreed to a three year deal, per reports. The deal is for $19 million per year with $4 million per year in incentives, with Imai having opt outs after each season.<\/p>\n
Imai, 27, is a righthander who debuted in the NPB for the Seibu Lions in 2017. He has been one of the best pitchers in Japan the last few years, and pu tup a 1.92 ERA in 24 starts over 163 innings in 2025, with 178 Ks against 45 walks.<\/p>\n
This deal is for less than was being projected at the start of the offseason \u2014 Kiley McDaniel had Imai<\/a> at 6 years, $135 million, while Ben Clemens had Imai<\/a> at 5 years, $100 million. I\u2019m curious as to whether Imai had deals on the table with more in guaranteed money, but which he passed on in a belief that he would be able to get a better deal after proving himself at the major league level. A shorter term, smaller overall deal also means less of a posting fee, and re-entering the market without the posting fee having to be paid would also help him if he has a strong 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MLB Rumors: Tatsuya Imai and the Houston Astros have agreed to a three year deal, per reports. The…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":485574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[4345,105,358,3187],"class_list":{"0":"post-485573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-houston","9":"tag-latest-news","10":"tag-texas","11":"tag-tx"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115821898948899754","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}