Left-hander Shinnosuke Ogasawara has been officially posted by the Chunichi Dragons of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, per reporter Francys Romero (X link). That opens up a 45-day window for his representatives at William Morris Endeavor to negotiate with major league clubs. If no deal is reached in that time, the southpaw will return to the Dragons for 2025.
It was reported back in October that the Dragons would make Ogasawara available via the posting system and that has now been rubber-stamped. The 30 MLB clubs can now officially speak to his representatives and see what sort of contract will be necessary to get him to put pen to paper.
While Ogasawara should generate interest, he’s clearly not exciting as Roki Sasaki, who has also been posted for clubs this offseason. However, Ogasawara likely has more earning power than Sasaki due to the binary nature of MLB international signing rules.
Players need to be 25 years old and have six seasons of experience in a foreign professional league in order to be considered “professionals” and have the right to freely negotiate a contract of any size and length. Players who don’t meet those criteria are considered “amateurs” and are therefore subject to the international bonus pool system, where each club gets $5-8MM annually to spend on such players. Sasaki is only 23 years old and will therefore be limited to a minor league deal with a signing bonus of a few million bucks. Ogasawara, on the other hand, is 27 years old and has appeared in parts of 9 NPB seasons. That means he has the freedom to fully assess his earning power and market himself to the highest bidder.
How much interest North American clubs will have in him is unknown. Ogasawara has had some success, but not as much as some other pitchers that have recently come over like Yoshinobu Yamamoto or Shota Imanaga. He has thrown 951 1/3 innings over his NPB career, though striking out just 18.9% of batters faced. For context, MLB average is usually in the 22-23% range these days. He did get his strikeout rate up to 24% in 2022 but it dropped to 20.1% last year and then all the way to 13.6% in 2024.
The lack of punchouts hasn’t stopped him from succeeding in Japan, as he has a 3.62 earned run average over his career and had a 3.12 ERA in the season that just finished, though MLB clubs might wonder if the same pitch-to-contact approach could carry over to North American ball.
Ogasawara is also on the smaller side for a starting pitcher, listed at 5’11” and 183 pounds. That’s actually slightly larger than the 5’10” and 175 pounds listed for Imanaga, so it’s not a total disqualification, but Imanaga managed to strike out 25% of batters faced in his NPB career.
Though even if Ogasawara is a notch below Imanaga, he could still generate interest. Youth is clearly an attractive quality which is why guys like Yamamoto, Jung Hoo Lee and Juan Soto have been paid so well, so the fact that Ogasawara just turned 27 in October will work in his favor. The recent downturn in strikeouts is a bit concerning but he also lowered his walk rate to a tiny 3.7% rate in 2024 and the ERA was still good.
It’s difficult to forecast a contract for a player coming from another league like Ogasawara but MLBTR predicted after the start of the offseason that he could land a two-year, $12MM deal. Perhaps he could benefit from the fact that the market for mid-rotation starters has been quite strong so far this winter. Each of Luis Severino, Yusei Kikuchi, Frankie Montas, Matthew Boyd and Clay Holmes have earned larger guaranteed than projected in recent weeks, which could perhaps trickle down to Ogasawara.
The lefty and his team will have more than a month to feel out the market and gauge interest. For clubs still looking to add in the rotation but who don’t want to pay for top names like Corbin Burnes, Max Fried or Jack Flaherty, Ogasawara will be part of a mid-rotation or back-end group that still includes Sean Manaea, Nathan Eovaldi, Jeff Hoffman, Nick Pivetta, Andrew Heaney, Jose Quintana, Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander and others.
Gonna be a tough sell for most ML teams I would think.
Low strikeout numbers, he’s going to be a very good groundball or flyball pitcher with good defense behind him, if not he’s going to have a rough time in the big leagues…
Could be an interesting “prospect” if he still throws 95-ish… and I have no reason to believe he doesn’t! I recall this guy having a pretty good slow curve but I haven’t seen him throw for a couple 2, 3 years.
He had a 45% ground ball rate over in Japan, which might sound good, but is below average considering the average was about 48%. According to the NPB pitch profiler, the only numbers he was above the 50th percentile in were HR/FB ratio, walk rate, and offspeed pitch value.
If he can get ground balls, people usually don’t care about the strikeouts, only the walks and if they square him up.
@Acoss1331
Maybe he ups his game, knowing he’s in the MLB and becomes impossible to hit…
@Acoss1331
His kwERA sits around 4.10, so it’s not great but serviceable. Probably not someone who’s going to be a superstar or anything, though.
Old York,
He’s definitely going to make sure he goes to a team with good defense and probably be a reliever.
He’s young and possibly coachable. Depending on what he’s asking for, I could see most teams at least interested in him as a RP or long relief. If anything else maybe the A’s or Pirates will pick him up to increase their payroll.
Rockies will pay him $10m!
Maybe the intent is for him to be a high-leverage reliever? I can’t envision any MLB teams having interest as a starter.
High leverage relievers typically have high K% rate and/or very high GB% rate.
do foreign teams post players who are on less than ideal players to try to get the money off the books? each year there are a few depth-types who try, or do, come overseas when it seems like they might have a tough time. anyone have insight? thanks
less than ideal contracts*
Most (if not all…) foreign postings (KBO & NPB) are because the player wants to attempt a MLB career. I’ve never heard of a team just outright posting somebody without their personal intent and/or approval.
okay great thank you, i was assuming both parties would still agree in that scenario. i wish the best for all making the transition, players like ha seong kim and shota coming over and being electric is fun
Perhaps someone signs Sasaki, Sugano and him in a three pack type of d deal.
That would literally and figuratively be an S.O.S.
I prefer 24 packs. Especially on long flights.
Not a huge market for him but I assume Toronto kicks the tires and signs him.
Doubtful
The A’s need to raise payroll, and signing a 5th starter type like him is a decent way to do it. Maybe he does well. He’s kinda young still, which is a big plus.
He aint gonna be anything special
Unlike you, I’m sure.
@energel
Thank you for looking into the future for us.
RussianFemboySportsFan!: your very welcome
@energel
lol.
:crying emoji:
why cant we put emojis? this is dumb.
what a weird user name lol….
@green
thank you :3
I am just describing myself.
He also won’t get paid like anyone special. I’m sure he will want the opportunity to start. An average starter can be quite valuable. Every team needs at least one.
Verlander and scherzer in the same sentence as pivetta and Heaney is weird
dude throws in the mid 90’s but doesn’t get k’s, i’m guessing that a lot of ML teams will have some interest if they get the sense he’s willing to change how he approaches batters in MLB.
Kikuchi is slightly taller and has a little more zip, but they seem like similar profiles
Let me guess, He wants to go to the Dodgers?
@Lemonade24
Why not? He’ll eventually make his money but in the meantime, he might as well get a few championships under his belt before he becomes a FA. Nothing wrong with that.
As a huge NPB and KBO follower, it’s so nice to see all these players coming over. Shinnosuke is not going wow anything. I think the age is on his side. He is definitely below Sasaki and Sugano by a little bit of a margin. I think there is a world where he could be a 5. I mean I’m not sure people expected much out Imanaga either. I wouldn’t take too much into the stats as it’s hard to translate. I mean Obviously Yoshi is the best guy to come over pitcher wise in a while. (Ohtani the best player) but I wouldn’t totally be set he will be flop. The K’s numbers are not trending well but Tugano doesn’t have great k numbers either, but I fully expect him to have success over here because he knows how to pitch.
I think there’s a few reasons for that.
Ohtani really paved the way for younger players. Maybe 15-30 years ago, making the jump from NPB (and Japan) to MLB (and US) was a fairly risky move. Japanese people are not known to migrate to foreign countries as they feel they need to contribute to Japanese society.
We’re seeing younger and younger players being encouraged to go abroad. The players are becoming stronger and teams can’t hold them down anymore. Japanese society is, very gradually, shifting… For the better. The weak yen also makes even a cheap deal in MLB a LOT of money here… I’m sure all of these things are taken into account. I’m happy to see the Japanese players try more often. Sometimes it doesn’t work out (like Uwasawa) but sometimes it does. It’s exciting. I just wish they would go beyond the west coast or Chicago.
Dodgers will sign him 5 years, $320 Million.
You forgot to tell us how much will be deferred.
NPB is in a dead ball era, a 3.12 ERA is not good. Central League average ERA is below 3. You guys should really give context to those numbers, because normally you’d think you could make the lack of Ks work with this guy because his ERA looks fine, but it’s actually not fine and this guy is a below average pitcher in Japan. He will get lit up.
Let’s go Mets!
@LGM
go where? go back home when you get to the playoffs?
@RussianFemboySportsFan!
Better than the garbage Blue Jays who promoted this whole core youth which only fell flat on their face. Time to sell off and rebuild properly. Jays should be talking to Seattle about sending Vlad Jr. there. They need a proper 1B man and some offense.
Maybe, but we’ll make it, then anything is possible. Even the Yankees made the world series, and they suck.