Japanese star Okamoto Kazuma has reached a deal to play for the Toronto Blue Jays in Major League Baseball.<\/p>\n
The Blue Jays announced on Sunday that they have acquired the 29-year-old Okamoto through the posting system.<\/p>\n
US media are reporting that he signed a four-year contract worth 60 million dollars.<\/p>\n
Okamoto won the home run and RBI titles in 2020 and 2021 as a member of the Yomiuri Giants. He has also won Japanese professional baseball’s Golden Glove Award both as a third and first baseman.<\/p>\n
Okamoto excels both in batting and fielding and had drawn much attention during the offseason.<\/p>\n
The Blue Jays are in the American League’s East division and are the only MLB team based in Canada.<\/p>\n
Last season, the team advanced to the World Series for the first time in 32 years but lost in seven games against the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers.<\/p>\n
Okamoto is expected to bolster a Blue Jays’ batting order that is centered on Vladimir Guerrero Jr.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Houston Astros say Seibu Lions pitcher Imai Tatsuya has joined the team.<\/p>\n
US media report that Imai signed a three-year contract worth up to 63 million dollars including incentives.<\/p>\n
The right-hander’s fastballs clock in at 160 kilometers per hour. He also throws a variety of sliders.<\/p>\n
Imai won 10 games and lost five, with an ERA of 1.92 last season. He was given one of the highest evaluations among starting pitchers this offseason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japanese star Okamoto Kazuma has reached a deal to play for the Toronto Blue Jays in Major League…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[1724,64,63,86319,941,86320,591,44,32363,86323,86324,86325,86322,6216,86321,86326,85,1996,1720],"class_list":["post-393039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-asia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-biz","tag-japan","tag-japan-broadcasting-corporation","tag-mlb","tag-news","tag-nhk","tag-nhk-world","tag-nhk-world-premium","tag-nhk-world-tv","tag-nhkworld","tag-nuclear","tag-public-broadcaster","tag-radio-japan","tag-sports","tag-tech","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393039","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=393039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}