Kenta Maeda is a baseball player who is in a class of his own. The Japanese pitcher plays in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Before moving, he played in his home country for the Hiroshima Toyo Carp of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), where he not only achieved a lot, but also broke many records. Since joining MLB in 2016, he has become an important part of the Dodgers team.
Biography of Kenta Maeda
Kenta Maeda was born on April 11, 1988 in Tadaoka, Osaka, Japan. Since he doesn’t have much about his childhood or his family, baseball is his life and his story. He started playing it since childhood.
By the time he arrived in high school, Kenta Maeda was already an excellent player. He played for the popular PL Gakuen High School in the annual Summer Koshien tournament. It was from there that he was drafted by the Hiroshima Toyo Carp in the 2006 NPB Draft.
Before getting the call to play in top Japan, the pitcher spent the 2007 season playing for the Carp secondary team. In 2008 he was invited to play in the main team. He would record his best year in the league in 2010 when he made his first NPB All-Star before making four more. He also won his first Best Nine Award (before adding two more), his first of five Golden Gloves Awards, and the first of two Eiji Sawamura Awards.
On top of all that, when he won the Sawamura award at home, he became the youngest pitcher to make the Triple Crown pitcher in Japanese baseball history.
MLB Career
In 2015, Carp decided to take advantage of the posting system and make Kenta Maeda available for Major League Baseball. He was signed by the Los Angeles Dodgers who offered him a $25 million contract that would keep him with the team for the next 8 years.
More so, the deal would also see him have bonuses of up to $10 million a year, all of which would add up to more than $90 million. For its part, the Hiroshima carp was to withdraw $20 million from the transaction as a display fee.
Maeda made his MLB debut in a game that saw the Dodgers have the best side of the San Diego Padres at Petco Park. At the end of his freshman year, Corey Seager and Trea Turner finished third in National League Rookie of the Year trophy voting. He also had a strong 2017 season, although it wasn’t as productive as it could have been after the Dodgers lost in 2017 to the Houston Astros in seven games.
Apart from playing in the NPB and MLB, the pitcher also played for the Japanese baseball team. He was part of the team that won the bronze medal at the 2015 WBSC Premier12 International Baseball Championship.
wife and family
As little is known about his high status or family, Kenta Maeda is known to be a married man. The Dodgers man got married to Saho Narushima in 2012. At that time, Kenta was still with NPB while Narushima was working as a TV host.
According to reports, the couple first got to meet through a mutual friend who introduced them in 2010 and soon after they started dating. In 2011, they got engaged and the following year they became husband and wife after getting tied in Hiroshima.
Apart from being a TV presenter, Saho Narushima also loves cooking as evidenced by what she shares on her social media. In 2015, she published a cookbook.
The family had lived in Japan before eventually moving to the United States. The couple have two children, a daughter and a son, born in 2018.
Height, weight, measurements
A handsome man, Kenta Maeda also has good height and body build. In numbers, he is 185cm (6ft 1in) tall and weighs 79kg (175lb). Overall measurements of the right-handed pitcher have not been provided, but it is evident that he has good measurements.