The Rakuten Golden Eagles of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball announced this week that they’ve signed veteran right-hander José Ureña to a one-year contract for the 2026 season. It’ll be the first stint overseas for the Premier Talent Sports client, who’s previously pitched for 11 major league clubs — including a whopping five teams in 2025 alone.
Ureña, 34, split the ’25 campaign between the Mets, Twins, Blue Jays, Dodgers and Angels. He logged a combined 55 innings between that quintet of clubs and worked to a 4.58 ERA. Ureña fanned just 13.9% of his opponents and turned in a 9.4% walk rate. The 96.2 mph average on his four-seamer was the second-best mark he’s posted in any of his 11 major league seasons.
For at least a couple seasons early in his career, Ureña looked the part of a nice back-of-the-rotation arm for the Marlins — his original organization. From 2017-18, he pitched 343 2/3 innings with a 3.90 earned run average, a below-average 17% strikeout rate, a solid 8% walk rate and an above-average 46.3% ground-ball rate. He obviously didn’t miss many bats, but Ureña was a hard-throwing sinker specialist who kept the ball on the ground and generally did a decent job avoiding home runs.
Things unraveled for Ureña beginning in 2019, however, and he didn’t get back on track at all until the 2024 season. While he’s posted decent bottom-line results over the past two seasons (4.06 ERA, 164 innings), the right-hander’s rate stats have continued to slip in recent years. Fielding-independent metrics like SIERA (4.89) and FIP (4.81) feel even that modest earned run average would be tough to sustain with his current rate output. And overall, dating back to 2019, Ureña has a 5.04 ERA in 514 1/3 major league frames.
Between those declining rate stats and the dizzying toll of pitching between five different teams in a single season, Ureña presumably welcomes the opportunity to have a guaranteed contract for the upcoming season. With a nice year overseas, he could position himself for another one-year pact in NPB, and if he makes some meaningful changes to his repertoire, it’s possible he’ll end up back in the major league mix next year, either on a non-roster deal or a small one-year guarantee.
Got a ring then dipped
He gamed the system by realizing you boost your chances of getting a ring by playing for five teams a season. Very shrewd! He deserves his dip.
Immaculate Grid legend
Good move. It ain’t working here, so take your act on the road. Maybe he’ll work out whatever has made him consistently ineffective and then take another run at MLB.
Dude has had a ten+ year mlb career. Thats the definition of working.
He’s 34 and has almost 9 years of service time. Would be nice to see if he can get to 10 for a comfortable retirement. Not sure going overseas is going to help him
I’m sure he’ll do just okay over there and end up back in the minors over here next year. I agree though why not go for the magical ten years if teams are still giving you playing time.
Or maybe he dislikes Detrailer park
Somewhere, Ronald Acuna is pleased………
Acuna lived rent free in this dude’s head.
I wish him well. So well, in fact, that he gets invited back to play for a few more MLB teams.
Do the Eagles play football too? Didn’t know Rakuten had a team. With Jose’s signing they’d be the Urena football team. Hope they do well in league. Tough division there with Wayfair, Etsy and Overstock.com nipping at their heels. Like their cat trees
And there’s an etsy pop up over Stock and way fair. Purrfectly placed. Could go for extra bases.
he’ll be back sooner than later. MLB teams need late summer innings eaters
Remember watching him pitch and thought batting practice pitcher. Pitches by showing the hitter the ball through the entire delivery. No deception nor attempt to hide the ball. Might get away with minor league hitters but that won’t work long term in majors.