The offseason is here and plenty of folks have opinions on what the Atlanta Braves should do during the offseason. Because there’s no such thing as having enough pitching and the fact that Braves President/GM Alex Anthopoulos recently stated that both Spencer Schwellenbach and Spencer Strider may not be reliable options to get a ton of innings in 2027, that does apparently open up the Braves to pursuing some pitching options going forward.
That search could include Atlanta potentially providing a home
ballpark for a pitcher who could be making his way across the Pacific Ocean from Nippon Professional Baseball to Major League Baseball. Back in March while the World Baseball Classic was going on, Jorge Castillo of ESPN reported that RHP Hiromi Itoh of the Nippon Ham Fighters was widely expected to make the jump to MLB.
The Japanese season has come and gone and it’s still expected that Itoh will be coming over. The reason why we’re talking about it here is because in his International Beat newsletter for MLB.com (which you can subscribe to here), Michael Clair shared what he gleaned from an anonymous scout currently working in Japan and Clair stated that the Braves could be a “potential fit” for Itoh if/when he makes the move.
Here’s part of what Clair had to say about Itoh:
While Itoh has an extra inch on [Kaima] Taira, he’s also 40 lbs lighter and could be ticketed for a relief role. “He could be an up and down starter,” our scout said, “but maybe in relief he might show some more velocity. In the previous WBC, he came out of the bullpen and he was 94-96 with some nasty stuff.” However, what Itoh lacks in size, he makes up for with a deep pitch mix consisting of “10+ unique grips and shapes” as noted by Yakyu Cosmopolitan.
Here’s the linked tweet from Yakyu Cosmopolitan (and if you’re on Twitter and you want to learn more about Japanese baseball, he is a fantastic resource to learn from)
Here’s some video of Itoh pitching for the Fighters this season, while we’re at it:
Itoh didn’t have as dominating of a season in 2026 as he did in 2025 which is when he won the Sawamura Award (basically the Japanese equivalent of the Cy Young Award) with an ERA of 2.52 (79 ERA-) and a FIP of 2.27 (73 ERA-) across 27 starts and 196.2 innings pitched — but he still produced an ERA of 3.23 (94 ERA-) and a 2.81 FIP (82 FIP-) across 172.2 innings and 26 starts in 2026. He also took a step back in the 2026 WBC when compared to his dominant effort during the 2023 WBC, so hopefully this isn’t a case of Itoh starting to really slow down now that he’ll be hitting his age-30 season in 2027.
With that being said, Japanese stars have continued to somewhat routinely over-perform their expectations and it’s fun to think about what, say, Jeremy Hefner could do with this guy if they got in the lab together. While the Braves have only been speculated as a potential fit, there’s real MLB interest here as Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle recently reported that the Giants were spotted scouting Itoh, so there’s plenty of smoke when it comes to the fire of seeing Itoh in a big league uniform soon.
Will the Braves be the team that decides to seriously pursue Itoh? There’s no telling as this is purely speculation at this point for everybody involved. It’s fun to think about and discuss, though, so let us know what y’all think about this.
