Astros’ Yusei Kikuchi is widening MLB’s influence in Japan with post-trade breakout

Reasonable people can disagree about whether the Houston Astros paid a good price for Yusei Kikuchi at the trade deadline, but there is no denying that they knew what they were doing by targeting him in the first place.

His start against the Arizona over the weekend was certainly mediocre, but Houston has yet to lose a game Kikuchi has started since he arrived, and he holds a very solid 3.07 ERA in his seven Astros starts.

Kikuchi's performance and adjustments since joining the Astros have removed a lot of the initial sting from the trade, providing a ton of much needed stability in their rotation. However, one of the perhaps unintended side effects of Kikuchi's breakout in Houston is that it has also managed to expand MLB's reach in Japan.

Kikuchi's rise with Astros is paying dividends for MLB in Japan

We all know that baseball is huge over in Japan, as it has become a hotbed for talent coming over to MLB and stadiums there are filled with raucous fans almost every single game. In terms of Japanese fans following MLB, however, that demographic has been primarily dominated by the omnipresence of Shohei Ohtani and, to a lesser extent, Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

However, the Houston Chronicle's reporting shows that the road paved by Ichiro Suzuki's arrival in the majors in the early 2000s is now expanding in a very real way. Sure, there are still a lot of Angels and Dodgers jerseys with Ohtani's name over there, but players like Kikuchi, as well as the Cubs' Shōta Imanaga and Seiya Suzuki, and the Red Sox's Masataka Yoshida are getting a lot of love as well.

This is just an objectively great development for the game of baseball and the Astros. Geographically, it is hard for a team like Houston to make in-roads in the Japanese market. With Kikuchi's emergence as a true difference-maker on the mound ahead of a likely playoff run, the Astros, all of a sudden, are getting a lot more eyeballs on them, which could make a Kikuchi extension after this season even more likely. After all, baseball in Japan is big business, and now Houston has a seat at the table.

More from Climbing Tal's Hill