Rakuten Eagles pitcher Kenta Maeda, who previously played for the Los Angeles Dodgers and other teams in Major League Baseball, held a press conference at Rakuten Eagles Mobile in Sendai on the 16th to announce his return to Japanese baseball after 11 years. number will be 18.

Maeda appeared in a black suit. He began by saying, "Thank you all for coming to my signing press conference today. I will be playing for Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles starting next season. My name is Kenta Maeda."

He is the third player to wear number 18 for Rakuten Eagles, following Tsuneki Watanabe and Masahiro Tanaka (currently The Giants), but he is best remembered for his undefeated season in 2013 with 24 wins and 0 losses. He was instrumental in the team's first-ever Japan Series championship.

However, Maeda himself has a special attachment to the number 18, a number he has worn, including during his time with Hiroshima. "The number 18 is a very important number in my professional baseball career. I hesitated, but (Tanaka Masahiro) is the player I aspired to be like. The player I followed in his footsteps. I'm happy to be able to wear the number 18 on this team. There may be some fans who have negative feelings about it, but I want to do my best so that they can see my attitude of fighting with all my might to help the team win, so I've decided to wear the number 18."

On December 15th, he was informed that number would be 18. He quickly contacted The Giants' Masahiro Tanaka. "I was told yesterday that it would be 18, so I asked him if it would be okay for me to wear it," he said, and he received his approval.

Maeda, who joined the Hiroshima Carp in the first round of the 2006 high school draft, won the Sawamura Award and the Most Wins title twice, in 2010 and 2015, accumulating 97 wins in NPB career. In the 2015 offseason, he moved to the Dodgers via the posting system, and after playing for the Twins and The Tigers, he has been playing for the Scranton Swallows, a Triple-A affiliate of the New York Yankees, since August of this season. He had a combined total of 165 wins in Japan and the US.