{"id":416893,"date":"2026-01-18T06:53:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T06:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/416893\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T06:53:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T06:53:07","slug":"npbs-orix-buffaloes-sign-sean-hjelle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/416893\/","title":{"rendered":"NPB’s Orix Buffaloes Sign Sean Hjelle"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Orix Buffaloes of Japan\u2019s Nippon Professional Baseball announced<\/a> this week that they\u2019ve signed former Giants right-hander\u00a0Sean Hjelle<\/a>. He had elected minor league free agency at the beginning of the offseason.<\/p>\n

Hjelle was a second-round pick out of the University of Kentucky in 2018. It\u2019s fitting that he landed with San Francisco, as the 6\u201911\u201d hurler is listed alongside Jon Rauch<\/a> as the tallest players in MLB history. Hjelle\u2019s long limbs get him good extension down the mound, albeit not quite at the level one might expect. The downhill angle leads him to generally work lower in the zone with a sinker, as he essentially doesn\u2019t throw a four-seam fastball. He has used a sinker, knuckle-curve and cutter as his three pitches at the MLB level.<\/p>\n

The 28-year-old Hjelle has gotten ground-balls at a lofty 56% rate over parts of four big league seasons. He hasn\u2019t missed many bats, and the Giants moved him into a long relief role after the 2023 season. Hjelle soaked up 80 2\/3 innings of 3.90 ERA ball two seasons ago but wasn\u2019t much of a factor last year. He only made 12 big league appearances, giving up 13 runs across 15 innings. The Giants designated him for assignment around the trade deadline and sent him outright to Triple-A when he cleared waivers.<\/p>\n

Hjelle pitched well in the minors over the course of the season. He tossed 67 2\/3 frames, turning in a 3.06 ERA in the Pacific Coast League. He struck out nearly a quarter of opponents with a 55% ground-ball percentage while limiting his walks to a tidy 5.6% clip. Rather than settling for a minor league deal with a Spring Training invitation, he\u2019ll lock in a stronger guarantee in his first move to an Asian league. Hjelle could build back as a starting pitcher in Japan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Orix Buffaloes of Japan\u2019s Nippon Professional Baseball announced this week that they\u2019ve signed former Giants right-hander\u00a0Sean Hjelle.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,175043,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-416893","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sean-hjelle","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}