As has become an annual tradition, a collection of high profile players from Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), the league with the second highest talent level in the world, may be headed to MLB this offseason.
In October, Purple Row’s Skyler Timmins looked at whether Teruaki Sato, the highest profile position player expected to make the jump from Japan this offseason, was a fit for the Rockies. The biggest offseason need for the Rockies, however, is on the mound.
None of the NPB pitchers available
this offseason are expected to translate into the sort of top-of-the-rotation ace that someone like Yoshinobu Yamamoto has become since his MLB debut in 2024, but that does not mean there are zero talented arms. The question is, are any of them fits for what the Rockies need?
Hiromi Itoh (伊藤 大海)
- Age: 29
- 2026 NPB stats: 3.23 ERA, 2.81 FIP, & 159 strikeouts over 172.2 innings pitched
- Contract context: Posted by the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters
After taking home the 2025 Sawamura award (the NPB equivalent to a Cy Young award), Hiromi Itoh took a step backwards this past season. He remained as durable as ever, reaching the 150-inning mark for the fifth straight season, but saw his ERA spike from a very good 2.52 in 2025 up to a roughly league-average 3.23 while playing his home games at ES CON field, NPB’s most hitter friendly ballpark.
This drop in run prevention corresponded with a drop in fastball velocity. Yuri Karasawa characterized the drop this way on a recent episode of Baseball Bar-B-Cast: “Itoh is a very different pitcher when he’s sitting 91/92 which is where he was this year, and then like 93/94 which is where he was in the second half of 2025.”
Fangraphs Eric Longenhagen, in an extensive piece covering many notable pro’s in NPB and KBO, had the following to say about Itoh:
Itoh’s stuff is pretty light. He’s durable (at least 146 innings pitched in every year since 2021) and throws strikes (fewer than two walks per nine innings in each of the last three years), but he sits 92 mph and generates roughly average-or-below miss and chase on all of his pitches. He’s a high-floored backend starter, but he’s not the type of guy who moves the needle on a postseason staff.
Overall, his impeccable track record and enormous arsenal of pitch types (depending on how you slice it he has as many as 13 different pitch grips) mean that Itoh is as close to a safe bet as it comes to be able to make the transition from NPB to MLB and remain a starting pitcher. What’s more, it’s possible (though not likely), that if he were able to regain his 2025 velocity that he could outperform that back-of-rotation projection.
For a team like the Rockies who have a desperate need for innings and upside, he would easily slot into their rotation.
Kona Takahashi (高橋 光成)
- Age: 30
- 2026 NPB stats: 2.54 ERA, 3.35 FIP, & 114 strikeouts over 138.1 innings pitched
- Contract context: Full international free agent
This is the second opportunity that MLB teams have had to negotiate with Kona Takahashi. The first came last offseason when he was posted by his team the Saitama Seibu Lions but ultimately decided to remain in NPB. This offseason, Takahashi has once again decided to explore the possibility of coming stateside but two things have changed:
- He is a full unrestricted free agent so MLB teams will not be required to pay an additional posting fee to his former team in addition to his contract.
- He’s coming off a platform year in which his ERA noticeably improved, his K/9 increased from 5.35 to 7.42, and his ground ball rate increased by eight percent. According to Karasawa over at Just Baseball, these production improvements came after having “revamped his pitch mix this past offseason while working with Unfiltered Labs in Arizona.”
Whether those differences are enough for Takahashi to receive offers that would entice him to make the move stateside is an open question. Unlike Itoh above or Kaima Taira below, Takahashi didn’t make the top 50 free agent lists from any of MLB Trade Rumors (where he was an honorable mention), Fangraphs, or the Athletic.
If things go well for Takahashi, he could end up as a back-end starter or a swingman for a team with good infield defense to pair with his high ground ball rate. If things go poorly for him, however, he may end up as a mop-up style reliever if he is even able to stick in the Majors.
Given that the market is expected to be tepid for Takahashi’s services, I could see the Rockies taking a flyer on him and seeing if his NPB success translates a bit better than expected. As the lone addition to the rotation, however, Takahashi would not offer either certainty for stable innings or the upside that they desperately need.
Kaima Taira (平良 海馬)
- Age: 27
- 2026 NPB stats: 1.36 ERA, 2.28 FIP, & 141 strikeouts over 146 innings pitched
- Contract context: Posted by the Saitama Seibu Lions
Kaima Taira is a fascinating player for a number of reasons.
Unlike every other pitcher coming over from NPB this offseason, there is little doubt that Kaira’s stuff will be able to get Major League hitters out. In 2026, his fastball averaged 95.5 MPH but he has the ability to reach back and hit 99 when needed. Additionally, his height (5’8”) and extreme extension (6.8’) create a unique release point that hitters simply do not see very often.
This mixture of traits mean that Taira should be able to frustrate hitters and generate whiffs in any league. The question for MLB teams is just what role they believe he is best suited for.
Throughout his career he has been flip-flopped between the starting rotation and the bullpen (despite his protestations). Evaluators are split on which role he ultimately will settle into after a transition to MLB due to his lack of an extended track record of a starters workload and outlier physique. Simply put, there are not many examples of 5’8” starting pitchers over 200 pounds that have had success in MLB.
All told, Taira has a chance to be a mid-rotation starter with the fall back option of being a true high-leverage reliever. Given his history of clashing with team management about his desire to start, it seems reasonable to assume that he will be looking for an MLB team that will be willing to slot him into their rotation in 2027.
Given the Rockies lack of competitive aspirations this year and dearth of pitching upside, Taira would seem to be a great fit for them.
Shoki Oda (織田 翔希)
- Age: 18
- 2026 NPB stats: n/a
- Contract context: International amateur
Unlike the three other pitchers in this article, Shoki Oda is not yet a professional baseball player. He is the latest example of a Japanese amateur deciding to forgo NPB entirely, despite having just been nominated in the first round of the NPB draft by the Yomiuri Giants, and attempt to start his career in the US.
The 6’1” lanky right-hander burst onto the scene with his performance at Summer Koshien, a high school baseball tournament, earlier this year. Still a teenager, Oda’s fastball has been recorded up to 97.6 MPH and he has a deep mix of secondary options to complement it. Karasawa, again in his interview on Baseball Bar-B-Cast, had the following to say about Oda: “I wouldn’t quite put ‘generational’ on him because I would reserve that for Roki Sasaki from the 2019 class where that guy was a true phenom, but I think Oda is one tier below that.”
Oda began meeting with potential MLB teams earlier this month. His status as an international amateur means that teams will only be allowed to offer money from their international bonus pool. Each year on January 15th, each team is assigned a pool of money that they are not allowed to exceed amongst the signing bonuses for all international amateurs that they sign that year. Most teams have spent all of their 2026 international pool budget already making Oda very likely to wait for the 2027 period to begin before officially signing with a team.
The ongoing CBA negotiations and impending lockout, however, will heavily impact the process of signing international amateurs. The signing period will not begin during a lockout as the process by which teams are allowed to sign international amateurs is a part of the CBA.
MLB has been pushing for an overhaul to the international amateurs system, so it will be very difficult to say what the Rockies chances of acquiring Oda actually are until the labor battle has concluded. Even if the process remains the same, whatever team does sign Oda will need to pull out of their handshake deals with many of the other international amateurs for the 2027 period.
What is easy to say is that Oda represents the sort of high upside pitching prospect that the Rockies organization needs. On paper, without knowing which other international amateurs they would need to back out of deals with in order to sign him, it seems like an obvious fit.
Conclusions
The Rockies need pitching in all forms. They need impact as well as depth. They need starters (plural) as well as at least one reliever. They need Major League pitching as well as prospects. They just need pitching.
In that sense, every pitcher is a fit for the Rockies.
The case can easily be made for any of the four Japanese pitchers above but ultimately the one that fits every box is Taira. He is young enough that he’s still in his prime, has impact potential, and a market which may be slightly limited by outlier traits warding off teams that are not in a position to take on short term risks.
The Rockies should be checking in on all four of these players but, ultimately, making a serious push to sign Taira should be at or near the top of their offseason priority list.
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