Major League Baseball’s free-agent market is open, and that means clubs can start circling a different kind of upgrade: talent coming out of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball and South Korea’s Korea Baseball Organization.
The international pipeline has already changed plenty of MLB rosters, and the Dodgers are the clearest example of how much it can matter. They had four former NPB and KBO players on the roster this past season, including Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki. Ohtani arrived as an MLB free agent, while Yamamoto and Sasaki came through the posting system.
That posting process comes with deadlines and fees. NPB players get a 45-day negotiation window after they are posted, while KBO players get 30 days.
If they don’t reach a deal in that window, they go back to their original team. The MLB club that signs them also owes a posting fee to the player’s former team.
The math can get steep. The White Sox, for example, paid Munetaka Murakami’s former team, the Yakult Swallows, a $6.575 million posting fee on his $34 million contract last offseason. The structure was $5 million on the first $25 million, plus 17.5% of the remaining $9 million, which came to $1.575 million.
This winter’s crop doesn’t feature an Ohtani or Yamamoto-level headliner, but there are still several names worth tracking for 2027. Here are five to know.
Teruaki Sato is the loudest bat in the group. The Hanshin Tigers officially posted the 3B on Nov. 1 after he won Japan’s Triple Crown and hit .306/.383/.609 with 39 home runs in 2026.
He draws some Murakami comparisons, though he is not a carbon copy. Sato has plenty of power, but not quite the same amount as Murakami, and he won’t walk nearly as often.
He also swings and misses a lot, posting a 66% contact rate this past season, well below the 77% MLB average. The expectation is that he’ll end up at first base or in a corner outfield spot if not next year, then soon.
Still, the power is real, and Murakami’s 35 homers in only 127 games in 2026 around a hamstring injury only sharpened the way MLB teams may think about the Japan-to-MLB jump.
Kaima Taira brings a very different look. Listed at 5-foot-8, the right-hander creates close to seven feet of extension down the mound, which gives hitters a low release window and a tough angle to deal with.
He’s not just a funky arm, either. Taira works in the mid-90s with his four-seam fastball and mixes in a cutter, sinker, sweeper, slider, changeup and splitter.
The sweeper and slider are separate pitches, as are the changeup and splitter. Seibu used him as a reliever in 2024 and 2025 before starting him in 2026, and he handled that role well.
The breaking stuff is only OK, and pitchers his size usually don’t hold up forever in a starter’s workload, so the safer long-term bet may be a relief role, possibly as a multi-inning setup man. Taira was officially posted on Nov.
Hiroki Itoh is coming off a season that was good, just not quite as sharp as the one before it. He won the 2025 Eiji Sawamura Award after logging 196 ⅔ innings with a 2.52 ERA, then followed with a 3.18 ERA over 172 ⅔ innings in 2026.
The 5-foot-9 righty is a seven-pitch arm with a low-90s fastball and a full menu of secondary pitches: sinker, cutter, curveball, slider, sweeper and splitter. None of them is a true plus pitch on its own, but he has been durable, throwing at least 150 innings in each of the last six seasons.
In MLB, he’s viewed as a crafty back-end starter, though a bullpen role is also in play; he hit 96 mph out of the bullpen in the World Baseball Classic. The Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters posted Itoh on Nov.
Si-Hwan Roh comes with a rare setup. The Hanwha Eagles signed him to the richest deal in KBO history in February - 11 years and roughly $23 million - and as part of that agreement, they also consented to post him for MLB teams this offseason.
Roh agreed to return to the Eagles to finish his career after his big-league run ends. The 26-year-old in November put together a .283/.360/.505 line with 29 home runs this past season.
He has legitimate right-handed power and a solid approach, though there are questions about how much he’ll swing and miss and whether his arm can hold up at third base. The Eagles formally posted him on Nov.
Kona Takahashi is the one player here who already went through the process once. Seibu posted him last offseason, but he didn’t land a deal he liked and returned to Japan, where he threw 148 innings with a 2.64 ERA in 2026.
Now 30 in February, Takahashi is an international free agent, so he can negotiate without being posted again. He’s more of a ground-ball arm than a strikeout pitcher, sitting 91-95 mph with his fastball and pairing it with a good slider and splitter, plus a cutter and curveball.
MLB teams see him as a possible innings eater for the back of a rotation.
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