{"id":274696,"date":"2025-11-10T04:36:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T04:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/274696\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T04:36:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T04:36:08","slug":"tatsuya-imai-to-be-posted-for-mlb-teams-this-offseason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/274696\/","title":{"rendered":"Tatsuya Imai To Be Posted For MLB Teams This Offseason"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Saitama Seibu Lions <a href=\"https:\/\/www.seibulions.jp\/news\/detail\/202500623630.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">announced<\/a> (Japanese language link) on their official team website that they have accepted <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/register\/player.fcgi?id=imai--000tat&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-11-09_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Tatsuya Imai<\/a>\u2019s request to be posted to Major League teams.\u00a0 Once Imai is officially posted, he\u2019ll have 45 days to work out a contract with a big league team, or else he\u2019ll return to the Lions for the 2026 Nippon Professional Baseball season.<\/p>\n<p>It has been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlbtraderumors.com\/2025\/09\/npb-kazuma-okamoto-tatsuya-imai-posted-mlb-free-agents.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">over two months<\/a> since reports first surfaced about the likelihood of Imai\u2019s availability this winter, and today\u2019s news officially confirms the three-time NPB All-Star as one of the most intriguing arms of the 2025-26 free agent class.\u00a0 Imai has a 3.15 ERA over 963 2\/3 career innings with the Lions, with a 22.31% strikeout rate and a 11.52% walk rate.\u00a0 While that career walk rate is on the high side, Imai has reduced that number in each of his last four seasons, and he had a very solid 7.02% walk rate over 163 2\/3 innings in 2025.<\/p>\n<p>Imai is only 27, and doesn\u2019t turn 28 until May.\u00a0 Between his age and an intriguing four-pitch arsenal (headlined by a fastball in the 95-99mph range and a plus slider), there\u2019s a lot to like in terms of how Imai\u2019s success in NPB might translate against Major League hitters.\u00a0 This upside led MLBTR to place Imai seventh on our list of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlbtraderumors.com\/2025\/11\/2025-26-top-50-mlb-free-agents-with-predictions.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">the offseason\u2019s top 50 free agents<\/a>, and we\u2019re predicting a six-year, $150MM deal even though some evaluators feel Imai projects as a back-end starter or even as a reliever in the majors.<\/p>\n<p>Imai qualifies for full free agency next offseason, so the Lions may feel that they can at least earn some money back via a posting free by letting Imai go now rather than 12 months from now.\u00a0 As per the terms of the MLB-NPB posting system, any Major League team that reaches an agreement with Imai will owe the Lions a staggered fee depending on the size of the deal, and on any future earnings (i.e. options, bonuses, etc.) attached to that initial contract.<\/p>\n<p>The Lions will get 20% of the contract\u2019s first $25MM, 17.5% of the contract\u2019s next $25MM, and 15% of any money above the $50MM mark.\u00a0 So if Imai were to sign a deal matching MLBTR\u2019s $150MM projection, his new team would owe the Lions a $24.375MM posting fee on top of Imai\u2019s $150MM salary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Saitama Seibu Lions announced (Japanese language link) on their official team website that they have accepted Tatsuya&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85,159512],"class_list":{"0":"post-274696","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tatsuya-imai"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}