{"id":386081,"date":"2026-01-03T20:28:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T20:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/386081\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T20:28:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T20:28:07","slug":"kona-takahashi-to-return-to-npb-for-2026-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/386081\/","title":{"rendered":"Kona Takahashi To Return To NPB For 2026 Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

2:20PM: Feinsand reports<\/a> that Takahashi had offers from three Major League clubs.\u00a0 7 News Boston\u2019s Ari Alexander<\/a> heard during the Winter Meetings that the Astros were interested in Takahashi, but it isn\u2019t known if Houston was one of the teams who made the righty a formal offer.<\/p>\n

1:30PM:\u00a0Kona Takahashi<\/a>\u2019s 45-day posting window for finding a contract with MLB teams closes tomorrow, but The Athletic\u2019s Will Sammon<\/a> reports that the right-hander will instead return to Japan and the Seibu Lions.<\/p>\n

There wasn\u2019t much buzz about Takahashi\u2019s bid to join a big league team, and reports began to emerge a few days ago<\/a> that returning to Nippon Professional Baseball was a distinct possibility for the 28-year-old.\u00a0 MLB.com\u2019s Mark Feinsand and Brian Murphy reported that Takahashi received just one offer from a Major League team, and it apparently wasn\u2019t enticing enough for the righty to make the jump.<\/p>\n

Takahashi doesn\u2019t yet qualify for full international free agency.\u00a0 Feinsand and Murphy suggested that he could pursue a multi-year deal with the Lions that includes an opt-out clause next winter, so Takahashi could freely pursue another contract with a Major League team.\u00a0 Sammon writes that Takahashi and the Lions are indeed discussing such a contract \u2014 though the Lions still control Takahashi\u2019s rights, the club was already willing to post him this offseason, so a longer-term deal with opt-outs somewhat formalizes the situation.\u00a0 It does mean that the Lions wouldn\u2019t be able to receive a posting fee, which would\u2019ve been 20% of any contract worth $25MM of less in guaranteed money.<\/p>\n

The general expectation<\/a> was that Takahashi\u2019s foray into the posting system was going to result in a low-level guarantee at best, or perhaps even a contract without any guaranteed money.\u00a0 Takahashi has a solid 3.39 ERA over 1199 career innings with the Lions, and achieved success by inducing grounders at roughly a 50 percent rate and limiting walks.\u00a0 The big red flag for MLB scouts was undoubtedly Takahashi\u2019s lackluster 17.17% career strikeout rate.<\/p>\n

It might take a particularly strong 2026 NPB season for Takahashi to elevate his stock in the eyes of big league scouts, but he\u2019ll still be relatively young (turning 30 in February 2027) in advance of what would be his first MLB campaign.\u00a0 With another year of good results and eating innings, Takahashi might draw more attention as a back-end rotation arm or perhaps as a multi-inning reliever next winter, should he end up opting out of his next contract.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2:20PM: Feinsand reports that Takahashi had offers from three Major League clubs.\u00a0 7 News Boston\u2019s Ari Alexander heard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[157463,363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-386081","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-kona-takahashi","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386081","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=386081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}