The Yomiuri Giants of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball announced Friday that they’ve signed right-hander Tyler Beede to a one-year contract. Beede himself announced the deal as well in a video message to his new club’s fan base (Twitter link). It’ll be the first stint overseas for Beede, a former first-round pick and top prospect with MLB’s own San Francisco Giants.
Now 29 years old, Beede was actually a two-time first-round pick, declining to sign out of high school in 2011 after the Blue Jays selected him with the No. 21 pick and then ultimately signing with San Francisco, who selected him out of Vanderbilt with the 14th pick three years later.
Beede ranked among the game’s top 100 prospects after a strong 2016 showing in Double-A, and he made his big league debut in 2018, tossing 7 2/3 innings but yielding seven runs in that small sample. He received a lengthier look in 2019 but was uncharacteristically homer-prone (1.69 HR/9) — a common trend among pitchers that season due to changes to the composition of the baseball. Beede logged 117 innings with the Giants in 2019 but yielded a 5.08 ERA.
A flexor strain and UCL strain early in spring training 2020 served as a portent for eventual Tommy John surgery, and Beede was limited to just 49 1/3 innings in 2021 (just one in the Majors) while finishing off his rehab from that procedure. After a rocky start to his 2022 season — five runs on 14 hits and six walks with four strikeouts in 9 2/3 frames — the Giants designated the now-out-of-options Beede for assignment and lost him to the Pirates on a waiver claim.
Things didn’t go much better for Beede in Pittsburgh, where he stumbled to a 5.23 ERA in 51 2/3 innings, fanning just 14.8% of his opponents against a higher-than-average 9.7% walk rate. The Pirates designated Beede for assignment themselves in September and this time successfully passed him through waivers. The right-hander became a minor league free agent at season’s end, and he’ll now look to turn his fortunes around in Japan.
Though Beede doesn’t have much in the way of big league success, he was a clearly touted arm dating back to his days as an amateur and throughout the early portion of his professional career. He carries an unsightly 5.40 career ERA in parts of five Triple-A seasons, with particularly rough showings in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League in both 2018 and 2021. Beede won’t be 30 until May, so he’s still young enough to parlay some NPB success into a big league return, as we’ve seen plenty of pitchers do in recent years.
Confidence is blown. Good move to off-shore.
Nice! Love me some Yomiuri Giants news.
They are the Yankees of Japan, after all.
Why not try to “reinvent” yourself in the minor leagues? So many MLB guys go oversees and really are just trying to revive their careers.
They pay more overseas
Well one, it’s more job security and likely more money. His options are take a non-guarenteed deal and have a decent possibility of being out of a job by the end of Spring Training, or head overseas where he could secure decent money and a guarenteed spot on a roster for at least the start of the season. Two, what’s the difference between trying to reinvent himself in the minor leagues in the US or overseas in the highest level of pro baseball in whatever contry, whether that be Korea, Japan, etc. It’s not like if he does good, he’ll never have an opportunity to return to US baseball. Even then, there’s a lot of former MLB players who have made a career out of playing overseas rather than toil in the minor leagues and get the occasional emergency depth promotion to the bigs.
Well, it’s funny you wrote this as I was just looking at Greg Polanco’s stats for this past year for the Yomuiri Giants
The guy’s 31 now and while he hit 24 homers, that .240 batting average wouldn’t get him back to the majors from there or anywhere else
The batting average isn’t what teams would be concerned about if Polanco was looking to make his way back state-side. It would be the on-base percentage hovering around .300. If he had like a .350 OBP and was looking to come back to the US, even if he only hit .230-.240, there would definitley be teams at least kicking the tires on him
You’ll have to excuse me. I’m a dinosaur. Too bad there is no notation as to how he played defensively or how he ran bases
Admittedly, I’m rooting for the guy, but it’s getting late
It’s called getting paid a guaranteed 7 figure deal, NPB pays the best out of all the overseas baseball leagues with KBO coming in second.
#ForeverGiant
More like #giantfortoolong.
With all the hype that surrounded him coming up, its hard not to wonder about who the Giants could have traded him for.
It worked for Ryan Vogelsong,. Beede has better stuff, but the mental part is another story. And like Yogi famously quipped, baseball is 90% mental, the other half is physical.
Good luck Tyler. Nice early Christmas present. Good luck my friend
This must have been a tough decision – he will have to be away from his actress wife for long periods – Hope he can rebound and find what he has been lacking.
Pirates are the farm team for the yomuri giants now
Seems like everyone who has played for the Pirates ends up in Japan or Korea. Can the Pirates join their league so they can compete?