{"id":314459,"date":"2025-11-26T08:49:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T08:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/314459\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T08:49:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T08:49:07","slug":"kenta-maeda-signs-deal-with-rakuten-eagles-after-decade-in-mlb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/314459\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenta Maeda signs deal with Rakuten Eagles after decade in MLB"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Veteran pitcher Kenta Maeda is returning to Japan, with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles announcing Wednesday that they have signed the 37-year-old former Los Angeles Dodgers standout.<\/p>\n<p>The deal, reported by Sankei Sports as a two-year contract worth over \u00a5400 million ($2.6 million), brings the Osaka native back to NPB for the first time in almost a decade. Maeda previously starred for the Central League\u2019s Hiroshima Carp, winning the Sawamura Award as Japan\u2019s top pitcher in 2010 and 2015.<\/p>\n<p>Maeda, who spent last season with the Detroit Tigers and the Triple-A affiliates of the Chicago Cubs and New York Yankees, had reportedly drawn interest from several NPB clubs before choosing the Eagles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Veteran pitcher Kenta Maeda is returning to Japan, with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles announcing Wednesday that they&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[148644,363,99,161824],"class_list":["post-314459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-kenta-maeda","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-tohoku-rakuten-golden-eagles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}