{"id":409706,"date":"2026-01-15T23:26:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T23:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/409706\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T23:26:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T23:26:07","slug":"takahiro-norimoto-to-stay-in-npb-sign-with-yomiuri-giants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/409706\/","title":{"rendered":"Takahiro Norimoto To Stay In NPB, Sign With Yomiuri Giants"},"content":{"rendered":"

Right-hander Takahiro Norimoto<\/a> has decided to remain in Japan and will sign with the Yomiuri Giants, according to a report from Sports Hochi in Japan<\/a>. The 35-year-old had been weighing an offer from a major league club<\/a> but will instead sign a multi-year deal with the Giants.<\/p>\n

Norimoto has spent his entire 13-year career with the Rakuten Golden Eagles. After a long run in their rotation, he moved to the bullpen and has ascended to their closer role in recent seasons. The right-hander posted a 3.02 ERA with 16 saves, four holds and only two blown opportunities last year. He\u2019s fanned nearly 24% of opponents in his career, but Norimoto\u2019s strikeout rate dropped to 17.2% in 2025 and his fastball velocity took a dip as well, sitting around 92 mph this past year (down from his days of sitting 94-95 and climbing as high as 97-98 mph).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear which MLB club had put forth an offer to Norimoto, nor is it clear whether it was even a guaranteed pact. It\u2019s a moot point now, as Norimoto will pitch at least his age-35 and age-36 seasons out of the Giants\u2019 bullpen in Japan. While it\u2019s feasible that he could still make a late-career move to North American ball, that\u2019s hard to envision unless Norimoto finds a way to miss more bats while working with what appears to be diminishing velocity.<\/p>\n

In 1838 career NPB innings, Norimoto has pitched to a 3.12 ERA. He sports a 120-99 record, 48 saves, four holds, a 23.7% strikeout rate and a 6.3% walk rate in Japan\u2019s top league. He led NPB in strikeouts for five consecutive seasons from 2014-18, whiffing 1044 batters in 958 2\/3 innings (26.5 K%) during that time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Right-hander Takahiro Norimoto has decided to remain in Japan and will sign with the Yomiuri Giants, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99,190958],"class_list":{"0":"post-409706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-takahiro-norimoto"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409706","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=409706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}