Let's get to know Tatsuya Imai, Munetaka Murakami, and the fantasy-relevant imports for 2026

106 days until Opening Day ... 

Cody Ponce wasn't the most-hyped player coming over to MLB from an overseas league. Not even close. And he won't get the biggest contract of any player coming to MLB from an overseas league this offseason. Not even close. 

But the $30 million deal he signed with the Blue Jays last week is big enough that Fantasy Baseball players have to stand up and take note. Sure, it's a far cry from their first move to bolster their rotation, the $210 million they gave Dylan Cease the week before. But Ponce's deal is the biggest ever for a pitcher returning from the Korean Baseball Organization to MLB, per The Athletic, and it's the kind of investment that should immediately put Ponce on Fantasy radars. 

So what's the deal? Why are the Blue Jays throwing life-changing money at a 31-year-old who flamed out in his last stint in the majors, putting up a 5.86 ERA in 55.1 innings back in 2020 and 2021? And why should Fantasy players care?

Well, for one thing: The Blue Jays just gave him life-changing money! If Ponce signed a one-year deal worth $5 million, he'd be easy enough to overlook. But the people running major-league teams are, by and large, pretty smart. They're not just throwing money at anyone, especially not that kind of money over three years. The Blue Jays are contenders who believe Ponce can help get them over the hump after they fell short in heartbreaking fashion in Game 7 of the World Series. 

Now, let's not get carried away: The Blue Jays didn't pay Ponce ace money, and you shouldn't expect him to pitch like an ace against major-league hitters. But he was the best pitcher in the KBO in 2025, putting up an MVP-winning season. His 1.89 ERA was the best of any starting pitcher, and his 252 strikeouts led the league (and his 180.2 innings were second-most in the league. He struck out 36% of opposing batters in 2025 – for comparison's sake, Erick Fedde struck out 29.6% of opposing batters during his own KBO MVP campaign in 2023 before coming back to the majors. 

Fedde, of course, gave up much of that strikeout rate once he got to the majors, settling in around an average 21.2% rate in 2024. But he was still effective (for that first season, at least), putting up a 3.30 ERA and 1.16 WHIP over 177.1 innings of work. Ponce was both better in Korea and got more money (twice as much, albeit with an extra year on the deal), so it seems reasonable to assume Ponce is the better pitcher as he makes his return to the majors.

And Fantasy players should have him on their radars as a result. He pitched with a bump in velocity in 2025, sitting at 95.5 mph and hitting 98, per reports, with a cutter and curveball that he has had since his days in the majors. The big change for Ponce in 2025 was, well, the change – a kick-change to be exact, though it moves like and is often confused with a splitter, apparently. The four-seamer was an effective swing-and-miss pitch when he threw it up in the zone, and it paired nicely with the changeup, which Lance Brozdowski describes as "a plus pitch." 

As always, we have to acknowledge that Ponce's success came against a league that probably has a level of competition below Triple-A, on the whole. If a 31-year-old dominated Triple-A like this, we wouldn't necessarily be running to add him in all formats. We would rightly view that pitcher with skepticism, given their age and level of competition.

It is additionally worth noting that Ponce was one of the least effective pitchers in the entire world in 2024. Pitching for the Rakuten Golden Eagles in the Japan Pacific League in Nippon Professional Baseball, Ponce had a 6.72 ERA in 67 innings, which is actually even worse than you might think – the league average ERA in the Pacific League in 2024 was 3.04, meaning his was more than double the average. He was the only pitcher in that league with at least 50 innings who had an ERA over 4.32 – again, his was 6.72. And that was just one year ago!

Pitchers can turn their careers around that quickly, and Ponce showed enough – and the Blue Jays showed enough faith in him – that he's certainly someone Fantasy players should be willing to take a flier on. It's just important to keep those expectations reasonable. $30 million is significant money, but it's also the same contract Reynaldo Lopez signed a few years ago and is slightly less than Clay Holmes got this time last year. It's a show of faith, but it's not a sign that the Blue Jays think he's an ace. 

There might be an ace among this year's international free agent crop, though. And there might be at least a couple of impact bats, too. There's nobody on Yoshinobu Yamamoto's level, but there should be more immediate impact from this year's class of Japanese and Korean league imports than last year, when Roki Sasaki led what turned out to be a pretty underwhelming group of debuts. 

Let's get to know the other names who could matter for Fantasy in 2026: 

Meet the KBO/NPB imports

Tatstuya Imai, SP

27 on Opening Day
2025: 1.92 ERA, 178 K, 45 BB in 163.2 IP

Imai is the gem of this class and seems likely to get the biggest contract this offseason. It almost certainly won't approach Yamamoto's $300 million contract, but Imai should end up one of the most handsomely paid pitchers of this free agency class overall, with Fangraphs.com projecting a $100 million contract that honestly feels a bit light at this point. Imai is coming off a 1.92 ERA in his final season with the Seibu Lions, though we do, of course, have to account for the extreme dead-ball era NPB is currently experiencing – his ERA+ of 158 relative to the 3.04 league average is roughly equivalent to what Freddy Peralta managed last season. There's nothing wrong with Peralta, of course – if he was a 27-year-old free agent, he'd definitely get $100 million this offseason – but it's just a reminder that we need to take all pitching stats out of Japan with a serious grain of salt.

It's also worth noting that, while Imai walked just 2.5 batters per nine innings in 2025, control has been an issue earlier in his career. He walked over four per nine innings as recently as 2023, and any regression in that regard would be detrimental. But if the improvements stick, he looks like at least a mid-rotation arm coming off a season very similar to the one Kodai Senga had before joining the Mets. 

As for the scouting report, Imai comes in around 95-96 mph with his fastball on average, pushing it up to 98-99 at the high end, giving him slightly better than MLB average velocity. The fastball comes in pretty flat from a low release slot, similar to someone like Joe Ryan, which is a good starting point. He leans heavily on that fastball and his slider against right-handed hitters, though he doesn't just ditch the slider against lefties – in fact, because it has arm-side movement as opposed to glove-side movement like most sliders, it's a pitch that shouldn't have significant platoon issues. He has a few different offspeed looks, including a changeup, splitter, and vulcan change, as MLB.com notes here, and each of his secondaries boasted impressive whiff rates in 2025. Given his fastball velocity and movement profile, that gives Imai a full arsenal of swing-and-miss stuff. 

There should be plenty of strikeouts here, and Imai seems especially well-suited to succeed early in his MLB tenure; given his weird slider, variety of offspeed looks, and low arm slot, there just aren't a ton of pitchers who throw like Imai. That uniqueness should benefit him well, and I like Imai as a mid-rotation starter for Fantasy who could throw 160-plus very good innings as a rookie, like Senga and Shota Imanaga did in their respective rookie MLB seasons. 

Munetaka Murakami, 3B

26 on Opening Day
2025: .273/.379/.663, 22 HR in 56 G in NPB

Murakami's value has been on quite a ride. In 2022, he set the single-season record in the NPB for home runs by a Japanese-born player, clubbing 56 while hitting .318/.458/.710 – and 1.168 OPS in a league where the average was .678! He did that as a 22-year-old and followed it up by putting himself further onto stateside radars by being part of Team Japan's World Baseball Classic winning team in 2023 and homering in the final. He was supposed to be the next big thing after Yamamoto and Sasaki came to the majors.

And now he's on the verge of coming over, and it doesn't seem like there's very much hype around him at all, does it? In fact, I feel like I've seen a lot more skepticism around Murakami than excitement, largely based on trouble with contact metrics. Per MLB.com, Murakami has had a whiff rate around 36% over the past two seasons, with his strikeout rate jumping to 29% in that stretch. That's a frightening statistic, and his in-zone contact rate is even more troubling, as he was at just 72.6% in 2025, down from 77.1% in 2022 and well below the MLB average of 82.5%. And he was doing that against less-than-MLB-level competition, meaning we might project even more regression there. And Murakami has also notably struggled against high-velocity fastballs, something he'll see a lot more of in the majors than he has in NPB so far.

I don't want to totally write off those concerns. But I do want to put them into some context. Murakami is a big slugger, and strikeouts are probably always going to be a part of the package here. And the floor here is pretty low, with his contact skills (or lack thereof) requiring truly elite power to work. If it's just plus power, he's probably a Ryan McMahon type who just won't matter very much for Fantasy. Even an outcome where the power plays could still be pretty underwhelming – nobody's exactly banging down the door to draft Matt Wallner these days, right?

But Murakami has been tracked hitting a ball 116.5 mph in 2025, a mark only 23 hitters in MLB managed in 2025. We're talking about what could be true plus-plus power, with a very good approach at the plate, even with the swing and miss. And there are plenty of players who are thriving in the majors like that right now. Heck, Riley Greene has played his way into borderline-elite territory despite pretty terrible swing decisions because he just does so much damage when he does make contact; Rafael Devers' swing decisions might be even worse, but he overcomes that to an even greater degree than Green does, while other names like Kyle Schwarber, Matt Olson, and Cal Raleigh have become stars despite plenty of swing and miss in their games. 

That roughly shows the range of outcomes for a guy like Murakami. There's plenty of risk that he just won't be able to handle MLB-caliber pitching consistently enough to let the power play. And there are some outcomes where the power is legit, but he's a tough Fantasy fit, ala Eugenio Suarez (in the years he isn't hitting 50 homers, at least). And there are some high-end outcomes where he's a legit top-50 player in Fantasy despite some batting average woes. 

I'll let the market dictate how excited I am to draft Murakami. If he's not being drafted as a top-200 player, I'll probably be pretty in on him as a later-round target. If he gets pushed closer to the top 150, I'll probably be a bit less excited about him. Given the vibes out there right now, his current ADP of 224.6 should rise once he signs, but there's still plenty of room for upside there. 

Kazuma Okamoto, 3B 

29 on Opening Day
2025: .327/.416/.581, 15 HR in 69 games in NPB

Okamoto didn't have nearly as much hype as Murakami during their respective NPB careers, but there are plenty of people who are arguably more excited about the elder bat here. Partially, it's because he just doesn't have those huge red flags in his profile – Okamoto's career high in strikeouts is just 132 back in 2019, just a 21% rate. 

But Okamoto probably doesn't have the upside Murakami does. His career-best OPS was his 1.014 mark in 2025, which came in just 69 games, and would just edge out 2020 as Murakami's third-best mark for a season. He also doesn't hit the ball nearly as hard on the high ends, with his max exit velocity in 2025 sitting at just 108.9 mph, about 1.4 mph lower than the MLB average. He's an older player and doesn't seem to share Murakami's physical gifts, so the ceiling probably isn't as lofty here. He's a safer bet to be a viable major-league hitter, but probably doesn't have the 35-plus homer outcomes here, either. 

The better bat-to-ball skills should make for a safer projection, though, and it wouldn't surprise me if Okamoto gets a similar average annual value as Murakami, albeit likely on a shorter deal. If he can be a .260-ish hitter with 20-25 homers, there's plenty of value in that. It's just that, if you're projecting best-case scenarios, maybe Okamoto's looks like the best Alec Bohm or later-Houston-era Alex Bregman, while Murakami's might look more like Austin Riley's best seasons. The floor might be higher with Okamoto, but if both are going outside of the top-200 in ADP, a higher floor is less of a concern. 

Of course, Okamoto figures to be quite a bit cheaper: His ADP is currently 373.6, and the upside is clearly worth taking a flier on if all it costs is one of your last few picks. 

Kona Takahashi, SP

29 on Opening Day
2025: 3.04 ERA, 88 K, 41 BB in 148 IP in NPB

Fair warning: This group is about to get a lot less interesting. 

Takahashi was posted along with Okamoto, and the 29-year-old has been roughly a league-average NPB pitcher in recent years. He was quite a bit better than that in 2022 and 2023, when he had consecutive seasons with an ERA of 2.20 and 2.21, but he has regressed badly in his late 20s. After being more like an average strikeout pitcher with great control earlier in his career, Takahashi's strikeout rate fell to a measly 14.3% in 2025.

Sports Info Solutions has a scouting report from back in 2024 that notes that Takahashi had added velocity in recent years and was sitting around 93 mph, but FanGraphs noted more recently that Takahashi's fastball "misses bats at a single-digit clip," indicating that we're probably looking at below-average stuff overall. You can survive with below-average stuff in the majors, but the margin for error is pretty slim, and it's not necessarily a profile you want to bet on. In Takahashi's case, he's probably limited to just 15-team leagues as a final-round dart throw to see if he has a good schedule early in the season and can get hot, and even then, there will probably be someone on your Draft Board with more upside, even with the 450th pick. This profile worked for Tomoyuki Sugano for a few weeks early last season – though Takahashi's control has never been as good as Sugano's, so even that comp might be asking too much. 

Ryan Weiss, SP, Astros 

29 on Opening Day
2025: 2.87 ERA, 207 K, 56 BB in 178.2 IP in KBO

Weiss is the other big KBO import, but he was neither as dominant as Ponce nor did he get nearly as lucrative a deal. Weiss' deal will pay him $2.6 million for 2026, with an option for 2027 that could push the total worth north of $10 million, per ESPN.com, which should put him in contention for the Astros' rotation. This is an organization that has a well-earned reputation for developing pitchers, and the Astros did well to wring a lot of value out of fairly marginal talents like Ryan Gusto, Colton Gordon, Jason Alexander, and Brandon Walter last season. That's where we should be setting expectations for Weiss, which means you're hoping he can emerge as a viable streamer at some point, not a Draft Day target. 

Anthony Kay, SP, White Sox

31 on Opening Day
2025: 1.74 ERA, 130 K, 41 BB in 155 IP in NPB

Foster Griffin, SP

30 on Opening Day
2025: 1.62 ERA, 77 K, 18 BB in 78 IP in NPB

Griffin and Kay make their returns from NPB with similar profiles, as left-handed pitchers capable of starting, but without the stuff to be rotation stalwarts. Kay should end up in the White Sox rotation by default, and they'll likely try to pull the same trick off with him as they did with Fedde two years ago – hope he pitches well enough for long enough to net something of some value for their long and winding rebuild. Griffin hasn't signed yet, but it is worth noting Kay's contract – he got $12 million over two years guaranteed, with a mutual option worth $10 million for 2028. That's enough to at least merit a look in some deeper leagues, though we're probably ultimately just talking about a streamer type for Fantasy in most leagues.