Chunichi Dragons right-hander Hiroto Takahashi will be demoted to the farm for an “adjustment period” following his start against the Orix Buffaloes on Sunday, according to multiple Japanese reports.
“I want him to figure out what’s wrong,” manager Kazuki Inoue said about him after the game.
The 23-year-old, who represented Japan at both the 2023 and 2026 World Baseball Classic, is in the midst of the worst season of his career. Through nine starts, Takahashi owns a 4.86 ERA and 70 ERA+, the worst marks in Nippon Professional Baseball among qualified pitchers.
Takahashi last spent time in the minors at the start of the 2024 season after an underwhelming spring in which he had been tinkering with his mechanics. After successfully resetting himself, he returned to the top team and went on to have a historic campaign, posting a 1.38 ERA and 200 ERA+ across 21 starts.
Takahashi was much shakier in 2025, regressing to a 2.83 ERA and 99 ERA+, but he kept his spot in the rotation for the entire year and threw a career-high 171 ⅔ innings.
He opened 2026 on the right foot, allowing just one unearned run over eight innings with nine punchouts and raising expectations for the season.
He held a respectable 3.20 ERA entering May 17, but has badly struggled in recent weeks, allowing five earned runs in each of his last three starts while failing to make it out of the sixth inning in any of them.
Takahashi is now 1-6 this season with a career-worst 11% walk rate and 1.51 WHIP, prompting the Dragons to deactivate him from the active roster. It’s a clear setback for a pitcher of Takahashi’s caliber, especially given his aspirations of playing in Major League Baseball in the future.
That said, his underlying numbers remain much more encouraging than his ERA suggests. Among qualified pitchers, he ranks in the top five in strikeout rate (25%), groundball rate (60%), and called strike plus whiff rate (32%).
He also delivered a brilliant 15-strikeout performance on May 6, though he was saddled with the loss in a matchup against Hanshin Tigers ace Haruto Takahashi (no relation to Hiroto).
The Aichi native sits over 95 mph with his fastball and pairs it with a hard splitter in the low-90s, a cutter in the high-80s, and a low-80s curveball. His lower spin rates and capacity to sink the ball have made him a ground ball machine throughout his career, while his velocity provides him with the upside to overpower many NPB hitters.
Still, Takahashi lacks ride on his four-seamer and has no reliable glove-side breaking ball, leaving his swing-and-miss ability heavily dependent on his splitter and cutter command.
His ideal form is likely somewhere between 2022 — when he confidently attacked batters with his raw stuff in shorter outings and posted a career-best 29% strikeout rate as a rookie — and 2024, when he felt more polished and pitched to contact better than anyone in the league while consistently working deep into games.
Takahashi will likely spend two to four weeks on the farm as he seeks to find consistency again. In the meantime, the Dragons will have to push forward without him. They currently hold the worst record in NPB at 19-33-1, though they have at least improved since their forgettable 4-17 start.
Photo: Samurai Japan starter Hiroto Takahashi allowed two hits over four scoreless innings, striking out eight and walking one as Japan beat the United States 9-1 at Tokyo Dome in the4r 2024 WBSC Premier 12 Super Round opener. (courtesy of WBSC)
