{"id":848914,"date":"2026-08-09T08:21:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T08:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/848914\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T08:21:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T08:21:16","slug":"baseball-former-mlb-closer-hirano-to-retire-at-end-of-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/848914\/","title":{"rendered":"Baseball: Former MLB closer Hirano to retire at end of season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OSAKA &#8211; Orix Buffaloes closer and former major leaguer Yoshihisa Hirano will finish his 21-year professional career at the end of this season, the Pacific League club said Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>The 42-year-old right-hander became the fourth pitcher to reach 250 NPB saves in April 2025. He made just three appearances that season and has appeared twice this year while also serving as a pitching coach.<\/p>\n<p>Hirano played three MLB seasons from 2018 to 2020, spending his first two with the Arizona Diamondbacks and his last with the Seattle Mariners, and went 9-9 with eight saves in 150 appearances.<\/p>\n<p>The Kyoto Prefecture native joined the Buffaloes in 2006, led the PL in saves in 2014, and is 56-78 with a 2.98 ERA in 702 NPB games.<\/p>\n<p>He helped the Buffaloes to three straight PL pennants from 2021 after returning from the majors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OSAKA &#8211; Orix Buffaloes closer and former major leaguer Yoshihisa Hirano will finish his 21-year professional career at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":848915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-848914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848914","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=848914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}