Tatsuya Imai

Imai is looking to become the latest in a growing group of Japanese starting pitchers to successfully make the jump from NPB to MLB. He had an outstanding 2025 season for the Saitama Seibu Lions, with career bests in both ERA (1.92) and WHIP (0.89). NPB is in a dead-ball era right now, with league-wide ERA dropping to 3.01 last year, so those figures are a little less dominant than they may seem, but they came with career bests in both K% (27.8%) and BB% (7.0%). That latter is particularly notable, as Imai struggled significantly with control early in his career and had never previously produced a BB% better than 9.8%. Imai is undersized at 5-foot-11, but he has decent fastball velocity (94.8 mph), a five-pitch mix and a deceptive, low-slot delivery. If the command gains stick around, he should be able to get big-league hitters out, though don't expect dominance on the same level as Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who had three straight seasons with an ERA south of 1.70 before making the leap. Read Past Outlooks