{"id":383550,"date":"2025-12-31T23:18:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T23:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/383550\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T23:18:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T23:18:08","slug":"spencer-howard-to-sign-with-npbs-yomiuri-giants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/383550\/","title":{"rendered":"Spencer Howard To Sign With NPB’s Yomiuri Giants"},"content":{"rendered":"

Right-hander Spencer Howard<\/a> is signing with the Yomiuri Giants of Nippon Professional Baseball, according to reports out of Japan (h\/t to Yakyu Cosmopolitan<\/a>). It\u2019ll be the second year in NPB for Howard, who pitched for the Rakuten Eagles this past season. Before heading to Japan, Howard spent parts of five seasons with four MLB teams.<\/p>\n

Injuries limited Howard to just nine starts with the Eagles in 2025. He pitched well when available, posting a 2.22 ERA across 48 2\/3 innings. Howard is the second foreign signing for the Giants in the past 10 days. The club inked<\/a> former Red Sox infielder\u00a0Bobby Dalbec<\/a> last week. They\u2019ve also been linked<\/a> to veteran right-hander Kenta Maeda<\/a>, who finished last season in the Yankees organization.<\/p>\n

The 29-year-old Howard was once among the top prospects in Philadelphia\u2019s organization. FanGraphs<\/a> and MLB.com<\/a> both gave him the No. 1 spot in 2021. The righty had briefly debuted the year prior, making six uneventful starts in the shortened 2020 season. Howard made 11 appearances for the Phillies in 2021, pitching to a 5.72 ERA with a solid 24.4% strikeout rate but a concerning 13.4% walk rate. Philly shipped him to Texas at the trade deadline for a return headlined by veteran arms Ian Kennedy<\/a> and Kyle Gibson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Texas gave Howard his longest look at the big-league level, but injuries limited him to 62 2\/3 innings from 2021 to 2023. He wasn\u2019t particularly effective with the club, scuffling to an 8.37 ERA across 21 appearances. Howard\u2019s results at Triple-A Round Rock weren\u2019t much better in that stretch. Texas shipped him to the Yankees in August 2023. He would also spend time with the Giants and Guardians before making the move to NPB. Howard has a 7.00 ERA across 144 MLB innings. His 4.77 SIERA paints a rosier picture, though not enough to suggest a return to the big leagues is in the cards.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Junfu Han, Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Right-hander Spencer Howard is signing with the Yomiuri Giants of Nippon Professional Baseball, according to reports out of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,206246,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-383550","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-spencer-howard","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383550","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=383550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}