Tatsuya Imai, SP<\/p>\n
Bowden\u2019s figures came in below Britton\u2019s, on average, but even Bowden\u2019s seven-year, $154 million projection for Imai is not cheap for a player who has never pitched in Major League Baseball. His strikeout-minus-walk totals in Japan were good but not great \u2014 on par with Yusei Kikuchi and Kenta Maeda on a three-year level, closer to Masahiro Tanaka\u2019s numbers if you just look at his platform year. If Imai is as good as Tanaka (who came over to MLB three years younger than Imai), then Imai will be worth every bit of that money and more. If he comes over and is as good as Kikuchi, who made the switch from NPB to MLB at the same age with slightly worse platform year numbers, Imai will be a slight overpay. A Maeda-like outcome would put him right in the middle, perhaps surprisingly given Maeda\u2019s last couple of seasons.<\/p>\n
So, on comps based on the bare minimum of information, Imai already looks like a decent bet in free agency. It gets better if you look under the hood. On velocity alone, Imai sat around 95 mph in Japan and touched 100 \u2014 if he sits closer to his max, as is the custom in MLB, he would have the best fastball of this trio by miles per hour. It gets even better once you consider the shape of Imai\u2019s fastball and his arm angle. Estimating his arm angle around 20 degrees, and using pitch movement numbers provided by Marquee Sports analyst Lance Brozdowski<\/a>, we can find comps for his fastball in the big leagues:<\/p>\n Tatsuya Imai fastball comps<\/p>\n PlayerVeloVertHorizAngle<\/p>\n 94.3<\/p>\n 13.3<\/p>\n 14.9<\/p>\n 19.4<\/p>\n 93.4<\/p>\n 13.3<\/p>\n 13.0<\/p>\n 21.6<\/p>\n 94.3<\/p>\n 13.3<\/p>\n 14.9<\/p>\n 20.6<\/p>\n 95.1<\/p>\n 12.7<\/p>\n 13.8<\/p>\n 18.9<\/p>\n 94.3<\/p>\n 13.2<\/p>\n 14.2<\/p>\n 20.1<\/p>\n 94.9<\/p>\n 13.5<\/p>\n 14.7<\/p>\n ~20<\/p>\n Imai\u2019s fastball is a near match for Joe Ryan\u2019s fastball. Even if you lump in all four fastballs that comp well to Imai\u2019s fastball, the group\u2019s four-seamers were above-average by Stuff+, whiff rates, batting average and slugging when put against league-average fastballs. Most likely, Imai\u2019s low-slot fastball with surprising ride will play well high in the zone and be an asset to him in MLB.<\/p>\n Tatsuya Imai now leads NPB in strikeouts after another dominant shutout \ud83e\udd81<\/p>\n 9.0 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 12 K, 114 P, 20 Whiffs<\/p>\n He sat 95-96 mph on the fastballpic.twitter.com\/E8e040M1n4<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Yakyu Cosmopolitan (@yakyucosmo) August 23, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n Imai likely comes over with a plus splitter \u2014 a pitch that is all the rage after this past postseason that saw the most splitters ever<\/a> \u2014 and a \u201creverse slider\u201d<\/a>\u00a0like the one Trey Yesavage throws.<\/p>\n Want a shot at a 95 mph-throwing Joe Ryan? With the downside of the beginning of Kenta Maeda\u2019s career? Seems like a good buy.<\/p>\n Alex Bregman, 3B<\/p>\n It\u2019s reductive and doesn\u2019t capture the realities of the market across the board, but matching projected production (by Wins Above Replacement) with salary does give us a window into how teams try to think about efficiency. Every team has its own projections, its own all-encompassing WAR-type stat and its own target in terms of dollars per win. Some teams are willing to bend around that target, and some have hard and tight rules around a low target, but every front office has to think about things in a similar construct.<\/p>\n Throw all the projected free-agent contracts in with their projected contributions on the field, and remove all the players not projected to be around league average next year, and here are the cheapest bats in terms of dollars per win in this market:<\/p>\n Cheapest above-average bats per win?<\/p>\n PlayerAge25 WARx$xWARx$\/WAR<\/p>\n 32<\/p>\n 2.6<\/p>\n 35<\/p>\n 3.5<\/p>\n 10.0<\/p>\n 34<\/p>\n 3.8<\/p>\n 69<\/p>\n 5.7<\/p>\n 12.1<\/p>\n 32<\/p>\n 3.5<\/p>\n 171<\/p>\n 14.1<\/p>\n 12.1<\/p>\n 28<\/p>\n 3.8<\/p>\n 212<\/p>\n 14.8<\/p>\n 14.3<\/p>\n 30<\/p>\n 4.9<\/p>\n 182<\/p>\n 11.4<\/p>\n 16.0<\/p>\n For this table, we used Britton\u2019s $171 million over six years projection to judge Bregman\u2019s cost, and Bowden had the same terms but another $11 million on top. Bregman stands out on this list for a couple of reasons, even though he\u2019s more expensive than the first two. He is the second-best player on this list overall, projected to be a 3.5-win player (four-win players are usually All-Stars) next season. He\u2019s 32 and definitively post-peak, but if you age him the standard half win a year, he\u2019s still a productive player in the last year of a six-year contract, maybe on the level of what Davis Schneider and Tommy Edman did this year in limited time. Even if Bregman gives a team only 10 wins, he wouldn\u2019t end up being a terrible value.<\/p>\n As a player, Bregman is intriguing not because he hits the ball hard or runs fast, but because of his skills at the plate.<\/p>\n \u201cI only want to swing at pitches I could homer on,\u201d he once told me, and that sort of approach ages well.<\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t chase pitches outside the zone (top 10 in chase rate last season<\/a>), and contact on those pitches ages terribly<\/a>. He comes from an elite place in terms of walks, strikeouts and defense, and in the right park that treats his pull-in-the-air approach well, his power could age surprisingly well, too, despite the lack of those elite exit velocities.<\/p>\n Ryan Helsley, RP<\/p>\n A metric like Stuff+ \u2014 a number that captures the physical qualities of a pitch<\/a> \u2014 has a more complicated relationship with starting pitcher outcomes because of their elaborate arsenals, but Stuff+ has a more direct correlation with reliever success. Look at the top 10 relievers by the Stuff+ number, and even if they don\u2019t all have top-of-the-league gas, almost all of them had success.<\/p>\n Best Stuff+, MLB Relievers<\/p>\n So why didn\u2019t Ryan Helsley pitch to his stuff last year? A late-August article attributed his struggles to pitch tipping<\/a>, and the piece noted Helsley was working on his mechanics to fix it. He was setting up and getting into his delivery differently on the fastball and slider, and it was apparent to hitters.<\/p>\n \n Ryan Helsley\u2019s slider and fastball setups. (Eno Sarris \/ The Athletic \/ Baseball Savant)<\/p>\n But even once he knew this was a problem, he couldn\u2019t quite get a handle on his fastball because he didn\u2019t feel comfortable with the new mechanics. This mirrors some issues that Jes\u00fas Luzardo had during the 2025 season, and it took the Philadelphia Phillies\u2019 lefty about a month to work through the fixes. Maybe Helsley just didn\u2019t have enough time to get used to the adjustments before the season was over.<\/p>\n Either way, a one-year deal for a reliever who sits 99 mph with above-average ride with a 90 mph slider that has more drop than average is something almost any team should be interested in.<\/p>\n Cody Ponce, SP<\/p>\n When shopping among pitchers coming back from Korea, every team wants the next Merrill Kelly. They\u2019d rather not have the next Josh Lindblom. They might settle for the next Erick Fedde.<\/p>\n What separates those who make successful returns to MLB from Korea from those who struggle? When it comes to Kelly, he upped his velocity and added a cutter. Fedde didn\u2019t add velocity, but he added a sweeper that ended up being his second-most thrown pitch when he came back to the States.<\/p>\n The good news for whoever signs Cody Ponce is that he did both.<\/p>\n Free Agent Cody Ponce setting a KBO record with 18 strikeouts in a 9 inning game. His teammate Hyun Jin Ryu had the previous record with 17.<\/p>\n 157 KMH = 97.5 MPH pic.twitter.com\/kpbXX6o2lW<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/GzjGqpAa0AAjQxO.jpeg\")
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