[NPB NOTEBOOK] Marines Sign Shuta Ishikawa to Bolster Their Rotation

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Looking to fill the void when Roki Sasaki signs with a team in Major League Baseball, the Chiba Lotte Marines announced the signing of veteran right-handed pitcher Shuta Ishikawa on Wednesday, December 11.

The 32-year-old Ishikawa exercised his domestic free agent status after eight seasons with the Pacific League's Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks.

Ishikawa negotiated with five clubs and Lotte was able to sign the Tokyo native.

"I'm determined to fight to win the league championship and win the Japan Series title," Ishikawa said in a statement released by the Marines.

Ishikawa went 7-2 this season with a 2.56 ERA and 52 strikeouts in 15 games for the Hawks, who lost to the Yokohama DeNA BayStars in six games in the 2024 Japan Series.

Ishikawa pitched Game 4 of the Japan Series. He struck out four batters and gave up one run on four hits over 5⅔ innings.

DeNA won 5-0, scoring four runs in the seventh inning after Ishikawa had left the game.

Solid Numbers for Shuta Ishikawa in NPB

Over eight seasons with the Hawks, Ishikawa has a career win-loss record of 56-41 with a 3.32 ERA and 712 strikeouts in 822 innings. He also tossed a no-hitter against the Saitama Seibu Lions in August 2023.

Under manager Masato Yoshii, the Marines finished third in the PL standings this season.

Ishikawa will join a team that is in need of starting pitchers. Only two pitchers this season had 10 or more wins for Lotte: Sasaki with 10 and Kazuya Ojima with 12.

Sasaki will be tough, if not impossible, to replace.

Even though he missed large chunks of the season due to injury issues, Sasaki was the face of the franchise.

Sasaki had a career-high 10 wins against five losses with a 2.35 ERA in 18 games for Lotte in 2024.

On April 10, 2022, Sasaki became the youngest pitcher in NPB history to throw a perfect game at 20 years, five months. He struck out 19 batters, including a record-breaking 13 in a row.

Ever since that game, Sasaki has been on the radar of MLB teams. More than 20 of them have contacted his agent Joel Wolfe to express their interest in negotiating for the hard-throwing right-hander.

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Author: Jim Armstrong

The author is a longtime journalist who has covered sports in Japan for over 25 years. You can find his articles on SportsLook.