It was already known that left-hander Shota Imanaga would be posted this offseason, and reports out of Japan yesterday indicated that the Yokohama DeNA Baystars have officially agreed to the left-hander’s request to explore the North American market. “If someone has a dream he wants to realize, and we think he has the ability to achieve it, we want to support that,” DeNA executive Tatsuhiro Hagiwara told the Kyodo News and other outlets.
To be clear, the Baystars have only agreed to post Imanaga, and haven’t yet officially posted southpaw for MLB teams. Once Imanaga’s posting window properly opens, he’ll have 45 days to negotiate with Major League clubs. If no deal is reached within the 45 days, Imanaga will return to the Baystars for the 2024 Nippon Professional Baseball season, and he’d have to wait until next offseason to again vie for a North American contract.
The 30-year-old Imanaga is one of the more intriguing players available this winter, and MLBTR ranked him 10th on our list of the top 50 free agents of the 2023-24 class. We’re projecting a five-year, $85MM pact for Imanaga, befitting his status as one of Japan’s top pitchers of recent years. Imanaga is a two-time NPB All-Star, has a 3.18 ERA and 25% strikeout rate over 1002 2/3 career innings with the Baystars, and he won a gold medal with Japan’s championship team at this year’s World Baseball Classic.
Imanaga is subject to the MLB/NPB posting system, so a big league team would have to give the Baystars a posting fee on top of whatever they end up paying Imanaga. The posting fee is worth at least 20% of the guaranteed value of Imanaga’s contract, with the Baystars receiving more money depending on the total value. For instance, if Imanaga did sign for that projected $85MM, his new Major League club would owe the Baystars $14.65MM.
Despite this impressive resume, Imanaga is only the second-best NPB starter on the market, behind Yoshinobu Yamamoto. MLBTR ranks Yamamoto third on our top 50 list and in line for a nine-year, $225MM commitment, based on Yamamoto’s ability and the fact that he is only 25 years old. Yamamoto is also tied to the posting system via the Orix Buffaloes, and interestingly, Imanaga’s reps at Octagon might be aiming to keep their client out of Yamamoto’s shadow. According to Alex Speier of the Boston Globe, the Baystars might not officially post Imanaga until after Yamamoto has already signed.
This strategy carries some risk. For one, Yamamoto’s own posting window has yet to begin, though he is expected to be made available to MLB teams relatively soon. Even if the Buffaloes posted Yamamoto tomorrow, he would still have until December 26 to land a contract, and it seems possible he might take closer to the 45-day maximum to finalize what will likely be one of the winter’s larger contracts. For example, since many of the same big-market clubs are pursuing both Yamamoto and Shohei Ohtani, Yamamoto’s camp might see if Ohtani could sign first, thus providing more clarity on Yamamoto’s market.
Should this scenario occur, Imanaga might not be posted until sometime in January, creating a bit of a time crunch. A 45-day window would put Imanaga close to the start of Spring Training, if Imanaga and Octagon also needed time to negotiate with clubs to find an acceptable contract. This would leave Imanaga with less time to not just find a new team, but to acclimate himself to his new continent, new city, and new coaching staff prior to Spring Training, and it would make sense that Imanaga would want time to properly ramp up for his debut MLB debut.
On the other hand, it isn’t an uncommon tactic for an upper-tier free agent to wait until later into the offseason to sign. If Yamamoto and some other free agent pitchers and trade candidates are off the board by the time Imanaga is available to be posted, he might have fewer suitors in general, but the remaining suitors might be more desperate (and thus more willing to get into a bidding war) to land one of the few top-tier rotation options still unsigned.
