After not really making an attempt at Shohei Ohtani and then losing out on Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki, reports came out earlier this offseason that the Yankees were looking to “get back in on”
the market of players from Japan and NPB. Former All-Star Masahiro Tanaka was the most recent Japanese Yankee, and the team has missed out on some legit talent in recent years.
When talking about the Yankees going after Japanese players this winter, the focus has generally been on pitcher Tatsuya Imai and third baseman Munetaka Murakami. However, there are other players being posted this winter, including a man who hails from the same legendary NPB ballclub that once produced Hideki Matsui: the Yomiuri Giants. So should Kazuma Okamoto be someone on the Yankees’ radar?
2025 Statistics (with Yomiuri Giants of NPB): 69 games, 293 plate appearances, .327/.416/.598, 15 home runs, 49 RBI, 33 strikeouts
2026 FanGraphs Depth Chart Projections: 102 games, 441 plate appearances, .217/.284/.341, 10 home runs, 42 RBI, 75 wRC+, -0.2 rWAR
The 29-year-old Okamoto has had played in NPB for 11 years, having made his debut for the Giants as a 19-year old in 2015. In his over 1,000 games at that level, he has a .882 OPS with 248 home runs. He’s been a six-time NPB All-Star, leading the Central League in home runs in three separate years. While he hasn’t been on a Japan Series-winning team, he’s helped the Giants to appearances in 2019 and 2020, winning the LCS MVP equivalent in 2019. Okamoto was also a member of Japan’s 2023 World Baseball Classic-winning team, playing first base and homering in the championship game win over the United States.
Okamoto has played corner outfield in his NPB career, but is mostly a corner infielder these days. Scouting reports say he’s a pretty solid defender at either first or third base, having won the equivalent of the Gold Glove in NPB.
Most interesting, though, is his potential at the plate. Having led the league in homers several times, as mentioned, Okamoto doesn’t lack for power. His career-best is 41 in 2023 (no small feat for a relative Deadball Era), and he’s topped the 30 mark six times in his 11 years. He’s also managed to do that while not swinging and missing too much, topping 100 strikeouts in just four seasons. While the scouting reports do say that he’s hit fastballs decently well, it’s perfectly reasonable to expect that he would experience a drop in home runs and an increase in strikeouts when stepping up to major league level pitching. Still though, he could still very well end up being a perfectly good major league hitter. The FanGraphs projections have him not doing great, but it’s fair to suspect they might be underrating him.
As fair as where he could fit on the Yankees roster, there would obviously be a spot…if the Yankees were remotely inclined to find one. The team is probably going to go with Ben Rice at first base going forward, but at the very least the righty Okamoto could be a nice counterbalance to the lefty Rice. Also, if Okamoto can even remotely replicate his hitting success at the MLB level, he would almost certainly be better than Ryan McMahon offensively. The thing is that McMahon still has two years at over $10 million left on his contract and it doesn’t seem likely that they’d be willing to eat any of that to take what would still be a gamble at an offensive upgrade and a defensive downgrade — even if Okamoto would be a modest enough defender at third himself.
The more I personally read about him, the more I become intrigued by Kazuma Okamoto; I just also have some doubts at whether the Yankees would actually pursue him in any real way.
