{"id":903027,"date":"2026-11-02T08:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T08:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/903027\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T08:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T08:28:09","slug":"hokkaido-nippon-ham-fighters-franmil-reyes-agree-to-four-year-40mm-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/903027\/","title":{"rendered":"Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, Franmil Reyes Agree To Four-Year, $40MM Contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters have reportedly signed Franmil Reyes<\/a> to a four-year contract extension covering the 2027-30 seasons, according to Mike Rodriguez of Rompiendo Sports<\/a>.\u00a0 Reyes will become the highest-paid player in NPB history, as the deal is worth up to $40MM.\u00a0 Reyes is represented by Shaun Inouye of Athlete Solution USA Inc. and Edwin Dominguez-Alvarez of DTO Sports (Dominguez wrote about the extension on his X feed<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an eye-popping payday for a player whose MLB career seemed to be fading away by the end of the 2023 season, before he signed the first of three consecutive one-year deals with the Fighters.\u00a0 Reyes\u2019 struggles in the majors are now a distant memory in the wake of his success in Japan, and the four-year pact indicates that Reyes is comfortable committing himself to NPB for the rest of the decade and maybe the rest of his playing career.<\/p>\n

Reyes has hit .294\/.357\/.549 with 89 home runs over 1430 plate appearances during the 2024-26 Nippon Professional Baseball seasons.\u00a0 The Fighters had posted five consecutive losing seasons before Reyes came aboard, and the slugger has since carried the club to three straight strips to the Climax Series final stage (NPB\u2019s version of the League Championship Series).<\/p>\n

Huge production notwithstanding, it is hard to imagine Reyes would\u2019ve landed anything near $40MM or a $10MM average annual value if he had pursued a return to the majors this winter.\u00a0 Reyes is 31 years old and has been mostly a DH over his three years with the Fighters, with a handful of games at first base.\u00a0 Even DH-only players who have posted big numbers in MLB action have had trouble landing such lengthy contracts when entering the open market, and front offices might have felt Reyes\u2019 improvement at the plate wouldn\u2019t have carried over against big league pitchers.<\/p>\n

Reyes hit .260\/.325\/.503 with 92 homers over 1540 PA for San Diego and Cleveland from 2018-21, translating to a 120 wRC+.\u00a0 It seemed like Reyes was emerging as a serious power threat even if questions persisted about his ability to generate consistent contact, but Reyes\u2019 production suddenly cratered.\u00a0 He batted only .217\/.268\/.356 with 16 homers in 538 MLB plate appearances in 2022-23 with the Guardians, Cubs, and Royals, and the 29.5% strikeout rate over his first four seasons ballooned to 33.6% in his last two years in the Show.<\/p>\n

In the bigger picture, the Fighters\u2019 deal with Reyes is a milestone for both NPB as a whole and the concept of foreign players finding second careers out of Major League Baseball.\u00a0 With enough on-field success and a willingness to stay put, however, Reyes\u2019 deal is evidence that players can cash in big while playing in NPB.\u00a0 It\u2019s an interesting factor to consider during an offseason where more free agents than usual could be considering playing abroad to avoid the uncertainty of the lockout, though NPB rules limit to the size of the contracts non-Japanese players can sign when first arriving in the league.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters have reportedly signed Franmil Reyes to a four-year contract extension covering the 2027-30 seasons,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":903028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[378026,363,99],"class_list":["post-903027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-franmil-reyes","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903027","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=903027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/903028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}