Major League Baseball teams were informed Thursday that Kazuma Okamoto and Kona Takahashi have been officially posted, joining Munetaka Murakami and Tatsuya Imai. They bring the total number of Nippon Professional Baseball players heading stateside via the posting system this offseason to four.
With a 45-day negotiation window, Murakami must sign by Dec. 22, Imai by Jan. 2, and Okamoto and Takahashi by Jan. 4. If any of them fail to reach an agreement by their respective deadlines, the player will return to their NPB club.
Okamoto has spent his entire professional career with the Yomiuri Giants, slashing an excellent .277/.361/.521 with 248 home runs across 1,074 games. He’s also the first position player the storied franchise has ever posted.
The 29-year-old has appeared at first base, third base, and left field over his 11 seasons in Tokyo, though he’s primarily settled in at first in recent years, where he projects as an average defender. Okamoto only played in 69 games this past year after missing time with an elbow injury, but his 212 OPS+ led NPB among hitters with at least 200 plate appearances.
Though Okamoto’s ceiling may not match the generational talent of Murakami’s, many evaluators believe he offers a higher MLB floor thanks to his superior plate skills and defensive versatility. The Nara, Japan native struck out at just an 11.3% clip in 2025 and owns a solid 17.7% career strikeout rate compared to Murakami’s 25.8%. Since 2023, Okamoto has been 18% better than Murakami by wRC+. He’s also consistently ranked among Japan’s top hitters in AIR% and Pull%, indicators that should translate to strong in-game power even without elite raw pop.
That said, with Okamoto set to turn 30 in his debut MLB season, his contract value is expected to fall well short of the 25-year-old superstar Murakami. MLB Trade Rumors currently projects him for a four-year, $64 million deal.
Takahashi had submitted multiple posting requests to the Saitama Seibu Lions in recent years but was denied until now, likely because he gained domestic free-agent eligibility and the club stood to lose him regardless. From 2022-23, the right-hander was among NPB’s top starters, posting a 2.20 ERA over 330 2/3 innings, but his performance has dipped in recent years.
In 2024, he was an abysmal 0-11 with a 3.87 ERA (76 ERA+), albeit with some bad batted ball luck. While he rebounded to a 3.04 ERA over 148 frames in 2025, that translated to just a 98 ERA+ in the dead-ball environment, and his strikeout rate slipped further from 16.9% to 14.3%. Among 47 NPB starters with at least 100 innings pitched, Takahashi’s 7.6% strikeout minus walk rate ranked seventh-worst.
Still, pitching-savvy organizations could find Takahashi to be an intriguing under-the-radar project. He trained at Driveline during the 2022-23 offseason, and despite his fastball’s poor shape, he averages 93 mph and can touch 97. He complements it with a splitter that works as a ground ball weapon and a slider that grades out as his best whiff pitch, along with a cutter, sinker, curveball, and slurve.
The 28-year-old profiles in the Kohei Arihara, Shinnosuke Ogasawara, and Naoyuki Uwasawa tier of Japanese arms. However, if the right adjustments are made, he could settle in as a swingman or back-end starter, making him a realistic candidate for a short-term MLB deal worth under $10 million, or, at the very least, a minor league pact.
Photo: Kazuma Okamoto flies out in the fourth inning of a spring training baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers in Tokyo, Japan, Saturday, March 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae)
