Japanese third baseman Kazuma Okamoto has signed a four-year, $60 million contract with the Toronto Blue Jays, the team announced Sunday.
The deal includes a $5 million signing bonus, and Okamoto will have a $7 million salary this year and $16 million in each of the following three seasons.
Okamoto, 29, has hit a league-best 248 home runs — one more than Munetaka Murakami, who signed with the Chicago White Sox in December — since entering Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball in 2015 with the Yomiuri Giants.
Entering 2025, Okamoto had hit 27 or more homers every season since 2018, but he tallied only 15 last season after missing roughly half of the season with an elbow injury from a collision at first base.
Okamoto is more than three years older than Murakami and doesn’t have the peaks in homer total or high-end exit velocities, but he offers a much higher floor as a player. While Okamoto’s homer totals dropped to 27 in 2024 and 15 in 2025, his batting average spiked to .280 and .327, along with his strikeout rate dropping to 16% then 11% in 2025.
Okamoto’s skills are concentrated more in the frequency with which he gets to his power — regularly lifting and pulling the ball in games — rather than as a hitter with massive power, though Okamoto’s raw power grades are still plus when compared to big league hitters.
Okamoto, like Murakami, has limited long-term defensive value and is seen as an eventual primary first baseman. He mostly played third base in Japan, but Okamoto has played a lot of first base (474 games in his career), so his transition should be easier. The combination of Okamoto’s long track record and wide base of skills made him attractive to a number of teams looking for a less expensive alternative to Pete Alonso on the free agent market.
The Blue Jays will owe the Giants a posting fee of $10,875,000 for Okamoto, according to the Associated Press. MLB teams that sign players through posting must pay a fee to the Asian team from which the player transfers: 20% for the first $25 million, 17.5% for the next $25 million and an additional 15% on every dollar above $50 million.
All deals under the posting agreement between Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball must be finalized by 5 p.m. ET Sunday.
In 11 NPB seasons, Okamoto, a six-time All-Star, has a .277 batting average with 248 homers and 717 RBIs. He also played for Team Japan in the 2023 World Baseball Classic, hitting the go-ahead home run in the gold medal game against the United States. He had seven RBIs in 18 at-bats during the WBC.
ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel and the Associated Press contributed to this report.