Bryan Sammons Signs With NPB’s Chiba Lotte Marines

Former Tigers left-hander Bryan Sammons has signed a one-year deal with Nippon Professional Baseball’s Chiba Lotte Marines, per announcements from the team and from Sammons’ agency, GSI.

Sammons made his big league debut as a 29-year-old rookie this past season, pitching 27 1/3 innings of 3.62 ERA ball for the Tigers during their Cinderella push to the playoffs. The 6’4″ southpaw averaged 91.5 mph on his heater, fanned 17.3% of his opponents and logged a 8.7% walk rate. Sammons spent the bulk of his 2024 season in Triple-A Toledo, where he pitched 102 innings with a 4.15 ERA, 23.1% strikeout rate and 10% walk rate. Detroit outrighted Sammons off the 40-man roster after the season, and he became a minor league free agent.

The move to Japan is the latest step in the type of baseball odyssey for which all fans love to cheer. The Athletic’s Cody Stavenhagen penned a fantastic look at Sammons’ journey from under-recruited high schooler to an eighth-round pick of the Twins who wound up being released both by Minnesota and by Houston. (Readers are highly encouraged to check out Stavenhagen’s piece in full.) Sammons, who graduated from Western Carolina with an engineering degree, contemplated giving up baseball entirely to pursue a more traditional career before taking one last shot and pitching in the Atlantic League. Just over a year later, he was on the mound at Comerica Park.

While Sammons is joining the same team for which Roki Sasaki has starred in his NPB career, he’s effectively taking the place of veteran lefty Dallas Keuchel, who started eight games for the Marines in the second half of the 2024 NPB season. The Marines announced in early December that Keuchel had been released and was a free agent. Sammons’ role will be determined, but manager Masahito Yoshii said his hope is that Sammons can pitch out of the rotation in 2025 (link via Yahoo Japan).