As the 2025 Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) season approaches, fans have plenty to look forward to. This season is packed with intrigue, from Munetaka Murakami’s farewell tour before heading to MLB to the potential return of a livelier baseball to the rise of a new Pacific League powerhouse. Here are the five biggest storylines to watch in NPB this year.
It has been known for a while that this season was Murakami’s last hurrah in NPB.
The 25-year-old superstar signed a 3-year extension with the Yakult Swallows after the 2022 season that stipulated he must be posted to Major League Baseball after the 2025 season. Back then, Murakami looked poised to be the most highly sought-after Japanese hitter ever after his record-breaking 2022 season, winning the Triple Crown after hitting .318/.458/.720 with 56 HR, breaking Sadaharu Oh’s record by most home runs in a season by a Japanese player in history. I suspect MLB teams like the Yankees have held off on long-term commitments to a 3B/1B partly because of Murakami; he is (maybe was?) that good.
But Murakami’s stock has fallen off since his unanimous MVP campaign. Red flags like Murakami’s sinking batting average (.300 AVG from 2020-22 / .250 AVG from 2023-24), a 30% increase in strikeouts coupled with the highest percentage of swing and misses in NPB, and perhaps most alarmingly of all, the inability to hit higher-velocity pitching (.160 AVG against 94+ MPH pitches in 2023 and 2024).
The tools are all still there. Murakami still possesses elite power in all fields, goes on dominant stretches, and can strike fear into any pitcher when he is right. Even at his lowest, Murakami is a top-5 NPB hitter, and MLB teams would still aggressively pursue him. The two-time CL MVP has everything to be one of the best sluggers on the planet, and he is looking to prove it once again.
For the past five seasons (not counting the 120-game COVID-shortened 2020 season), NPB hitters have consistently hit fewer and fewer homers, culminating in a historically low mark of 975 HR in 2024, only the third time since 1959 the league has failed to reach the 1000+ HR mark. The main culprit is, without a doubt, the ball itself, which is slightly smaller than its MLB counterpart and features higher/raised seams.
In 2012, the league had a problem: offense had cratered over the past two years due to suddenly becoming a herculean effort to hit the ball over the fence (881 HR in 2012, 939 in 2011, 1605 in 2010), so the league secretly asked Mizuno (NPB’s ball manufacturer) to give it greater bounce off the bat for the 2013 season. The main benefit was Wladimir Balentien, a consistent 30+ HR power bat for the Swallows over his 11-year career, who suddenly hit 60 home runs to break Sadaharu Oh’s 55 HR in 1964. Balentien never hit more than 38 for the rest of his career.
We have reached a similar breaking point: the league’s OPS has dropped below .650, and no foreigner has hit 30+ HR since 2019. Will NPB “juice” the balls like in 2013, or will they keep the status quo? Either way, it will be easy to tell once the games begin.
The Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters have always zigged when other NPB teams zagged. In 2012, they were the only team to take Shohei Ohtani in the NPB Draft despite the two-way phenom expressing a strong desire to sign with an MLB team. Years later, after Ohtani and their championship core had left, the Fighters hired the quirkiest man in baseball to be their manager, former Mets outfielder Tsuyoshi “Big Boss” Shinjo. Since Shinjo took over for the 2022 NPB season, the Fighters have taken two more two-way talents in the first round, LHP/OF Kota Yazawa in the ’22 draft and Leo Shibata in ’24.
The Fighters had finished the last two seasons firmly in last place while the team was rebuilding its core, with Shinjo favoring younger players over traditional veterans, very similar to what you would see from an MLB team rebuilding. The team showed immense progress in 2024, with a surprise second-place finish before being swept by the Hawks in the playoffs, and now all of the long-term decisions the team made are paying off.
The lineup features a clear big three of RF Chusei Mannami, DH Franmil Reyes, and 1B/3B Kotaro Kiyomiya, all under 30 years old. Mannami has gained worldwide fame for his cannon of an arm in right field but has also turned himself into a significant threat at the plate with big-time power and an evolving approach. Reyes was NPB’s best hitter by OPS in the 2nd half and could have the best season by a foreign player since Wladimir Balentien hit 60 HR in 2013 (more on that below), and Kiyomiya shook off the bust label after being selected by 7 NPB teams and put up a 174wRC+ in 2024. The rest of the lineup has talented contributors on the rise, like C Yua Tamiya, OF Shun Mizutani, plus veterans C/1B Ariel Martínez and OF Go Matsumoto.
On the mound, it’s even better, with 27-year-old WBC champion RHP Hiromi Itoh leading the rotation, followed by Takayuki Katoh, Koki Kitayama, Shoma Kanemura, and their new signing, RHP Gu-Lin Ruey Yang, who is the reigning CPBL MVP. The top four I mentioned combined for a 2.55 ERA in over 560 innings of work in 2024 and only Katoh is over the age of 28 (32). The bullpen is the team’s biggest weakness, but it still projects to be a middle-of-the-pack unit with an upside to grow.
Though it will be difficult to dethrone the mighty Softbank Hawks, whom the Fighters finished 13.5 games in 2024, I believe this youth movement has enough to give the Fighters their first Pacific League pennant since 2016.
After a 7-year NPB career that featured one of the most dominant stretches in Japanese Baseball history, Yoshinobu Yamamoto departed Osaka and the Orix Buffaloes for the City of Angels to rock Dodger Blue for the next 11 seasons. Yamamoto captured three straight pitching Triple Crowns and Sawamura Awards (NPB’s equivalent of the Cy Young Award) and signed the largest free-agent contract by a pitcher in baseball history.
But you would be misled if you thought that Japan’s talent on the mound is drying up due to the recent exodus to America. The assumed heir to Yamamoto’s crown was projected to be 22-year-old fireballer Roki Sasaki. Still, surprisingly, he left the Chiba Lotte Marines before he was eligible to post. Instead, he was limited to signing for the international bonus pool money, which left hundreds of millions of dollars on the table for Sasaki and dozens of millions for the Marines. There are now three candidates I deem worthy of being Japan’s next ace:
Hiroto Takahashi, a 22-year-old right-hander for the Chunichi Dragons, has been trying to model himself after Yamamoto. Takahashi trained with Yamamoto in the 2024 offseason and has been attempting to mimic his mechanics and more: “His pitching skill, his pitching style, everything — I think he’s the best pitcher that I’ve ever seen in my life,” Takahashi said with a broad smile. “I’m trying to take away anything that I can, steal everything from Yoshinobu.” (Takahashi speaking about Yamamoto in an interview for MLB.com.) 2024 was the best year for Takahashi as a pro, going 12-4 with a minuscule 1.38 ERA. His arsenal consists of a mid-90s fastball that can get up to 98mph and a devastating forkball that we have gotten so used to seeing with elite Japanese pitchers.
Hiroya Miyagi is a former teammate of Yamamoto, who formed a sort of Batman & Robin duo at the top of the Buffaloes rotation, conquering three straight Pacific League pennants. Miyagi, however, is a much different pitcher than Yamamoto and even Takahashi, as he does not possess overpowering stuff. The 23-year-old southpaw has an array of weapons. The fastball has crept up in velocity over the years and now sits 92-94 MPH, and his primary, secondary pitch is a slider. Still, his three other less-used offerings (forkball, changeup, curve) have garnered better results, with batters only having ever hit 2 HRs against all three pitches in Miyagi’s career (and zero against the forkball) per Deltagraphs.com. Miyagi heads into year 6 in Osaka and is now considered a consensus top-3 pitcher in the league. I believe he might be one pitch-usage tinker away from replicating Yamamoto´s dominance in his way.
The wildcard is 22-year-old Shunpeita Yamashita, who doesn’t resemble Yamamoto as Takahashi does with his mechanics or like how Miyagi shares Yamamoto’s more diminutive physical stature. Instead, Yamashita is built like Shohei Ohtani, and he has shown flashes of reaching the same heights Ohtani has on the mound. The 6-foot-2, 205lbs RHP has just 2 years of NPB experience with Orix. Yamashita was sensational as a rookie, going 9-3 with a 1.61 ERA in 95 innings of work. Still, his sophomore year went so poorly (to Yamashita’s standards) that he got demoted to the bullpen at one point, mostly struggling with command. The common denominator was Yamashita’s stuff, which remained elite through the highs and lows. Yamashita consistently sits 96-99 MPH and can reach back for triple digits, coupled with a hammer curve and forkball. Yamashita offers the highest ceiling but also the lowest floor of the three.
Once upon a time, hitters like Randy Bass, Tuffy Rhodes, and Warren Cromartie ruled Japanese Baseball after being cast off major league teams. Bass holds the NPB record for batting average in a season (.389 in 1985), while Balentien is the homerun king (60 HR in 2013). As Japanese pitching has evolved and MLB teams let fewer talents slip through the cracks, NPB teams signed over-the-hill veterans or unproven AAA-level hitters. The expectation went from acquiring a 30+HR, 100+ RBI cleanup hitter to being satisfied with league-average production.
Since 2019, no gaijin (slang for foreigner) hitter has managed to hit 30 home runs, but the tides finally seem to be turning again. In 2024, three of the top 5 NPB hitters by wRC+ (min. 350 PA) were not Japanese. Georgia-native Tyler Austin, and Dominicans Franmil Reyes and Domingo Santana. Other exciting names include Marines duo Neftalí Soto & Gregory Polanco (20+HR each), Venezuelan Leandro Cedeño (hard-hit% leader), and José Osuna.
Austin, 33, has spent his last 5 seasons in Yokohama after spending 4 years in MLB with four different organizations. Though he has never been healthy enough to get 450 PA in a season, Austin still has put up MVP-caliber seasons, especially in 2024. Austin hit .316/.382/.601 with 25 HR, leading the Baystars lineup to the Japan Series pennant and capturing a batting title. When on the field, Austin is a top-3 NPB hitter.
Reyes, 29, came on late last year for the Fighters, leading NPB in OPS (on-base plus slugging) after the All-Star break. The “Franimal” hit .290/.348/.564 with 25 HR on the year, though the Dominican did it in just 368 PA. If he can extrapolate his second half-production over an entire year, the Fighters will probably be in first place in the Pacific League, Reyes will get many MVP votes, and we might have the first foreign MVP since Balentien in 2013. Time will tell…
Photo Credit: NPB
