Right-hander Tatsuya Imai and the Houston Astros have agreed to a $54 million, three-year contract, a person familiar with the negotiations told The Associated Press on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the agreement had not been announced.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Imai gets a $2 million signing bonus and salaries of $16 million this year and $18 million in each of the final two seasons. He can earn an additional $3 million in performance bonuses this year: $1 million each for 80, 90 and 100 innings.<\/p>\n
His 2027 and 2028 salaries would escalate by the amount of performance bonuses earned in 2026, which could raise the deal\u2019s value to $63 million over three years.<\/p>\n
Imai can opt out after the 2026 and 2027 seasons.<\/p>\n
Under the posting agreement between Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball, a deal must be finalized by 5 p.m. EST Friday.<\/p>\n
Imai receives the third-highest average annual value for a Japanese pitcher entering Major League Baseball behind Yoshinobu Yamamoto\u2019s $27.08 million with the Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a> in a deal that started in 2024 and Masahiro Tanaka\u2019s $22.14 million with the New York Yankees<\/a> in a contract that ran from 2014-20.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n A 27-year-old righty, Imai went 10-5 with a 1.92 ERA this season with the Pacific League\u2019s Seibu Lions. He struck out 178 batters in 163 2\/3 innings.<\/p>\n Imai is 58-45 with a 3.15 ERA in eight seasons with Seibu, with 907 strikeouts in 963 2\/3 innings. He is a three-time All-Star.<\/p>\n Imai pitched eight innings of a combined no-hitter against Fukuoka on April 18. He struck out 17 against Yokohama on June 17, breaking Daisuke Matsuzaka\u2019s previous team record of 16 from 2004.<\/p>\n Under MLB\u2019s posting agreement with NPB, Seibu will get a posting fee of $9.675 million from the Astros and a supplemental fee of 15% of any earned bonuses, salary escalators and exercised options.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Right-hander Tatsuya Imai and the Houston Astros have agreed to a $54 million, three-year contract, a person familiar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[48574,56,5513,58,57,42750,48573,21176,48570,48569,48568,48571,48572],"class_list":["post-107850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-daisuke-matsuzaka","tag-houston","tag-houston-astros","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-masahiro-tanaka","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-nippon-professional-baseball","tag-performance-bonuses","tag-tatsuya-imai","tag-the-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-yoshinobu-yamamoto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}