Nippon Professional Baseball has announced this year’s Eiji Sawamura and Golden Glove Award winners.
The Sawamura was unveiled on Oct. 27 during the Japan Series, while the Gold Gloves were released earlier this week. The league will round out its honors on Nov.26, when the MVP and Rookie of the Year are revealed and all awards are officially presented at the annual NPB Awards.
Named after legend Eiji Sawamura, the award is often viewed as Japan’s equivalent to the Cy Young, though its voting process makes it quite different. Only one pitcher across both leagues wins annually, and a small panel of former recipients judges candidates based on traditional criteria such as wins, winning percentage, complete games, innings, earned run average, and strikeouts. In 2024, no winner was declared at all, fueling criticism that the award’s standards are outdated in the modern game.
But that didn’t stop Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters ace Hiromi Itoh from securing the honor in 2025. The 28-year-old went 14-8 with a 2.52 ERA, led NPB with 196 ⅔ innings and 195 strikeouts, posted six complete games, and delivered 22 quality starts in 27 outings. Though he finished just 14th among qualified pitchers in ERA (11th in ERA+), his underlying metrics were outstanding.
His 2.63 FIP ranked in the top five, and his 20.8% strikeout-minus-walk rate was second in NPB, trailing only Hiroya Miyagi. The right-hander has built his reputation on one of the deepest pitch mixes in the world, featuring at least nine different offerings (four-seam fastball, splitter, sweeper, slider, sinker, curveball, cutter, changeup, and even an eephus) along with multiple variations of several of those pitches.
The Hokkaido-native, who owns a career 2.87 ERA and a 22% strikeout rate over five NPB seasons, is a candidate to be posted to Major League Baseball after the 2026 season. It marks his first career Sawamura, and the first time the award had been given since Yoshinobu Yamamoto won it three straight years from 2021 to 2023.
