Franmil Reyes just signed the biggest contract in NPB history, and the details are wild. The slugger agreed to a four-year guaranteed extension with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters worth up to $40 million — and buried inside that deal is a clause you won’t find anywhere in MLB: $75,000 for every home run past No. 25 in a given season.
Reyes revealed the terms himself in an interview with @AbriendoSports. The deal keeps him in Japan through 2030 and surpasses the $32.5 million contract Raidel Martínez signed in 2024 as the richest ever handed to a foreign player in the NPB.
Not bad for a guy Cleveland, Chicago, Kansas City, and Washington all let walk to the minor leagues.
The Clause That Doesn’t Exist in MLB
The total value is impressive. The structure is what makes this contract genuinely unusual. Starting with home run No. 26, every additional homer pays Reyes $75,000. It’s a clause built specifically for a pure slugger — it rewards him most exactly when he’s performing at his peak.
To put that in perspective: Reyes hit 32 home runs in both 2025 and 2026. If the incentive clause had been active, he would have collected an extra $450,000 just from homers 26 through 32 — in each of those two seasons. MLB teams almost never structure incentives that directly tied to a hitter’s raw production. The NPB, apparently, does.
Three Years, 89 Home Runs, a Franchise Record
Reyes arrived in Hokkaido in January 2024 with no long-term security — he signed three consecutive one-year deals before this extension. What he did in that stretch made the Fighters go all in.
- 2024: .290 AVG, 25 HR, 65 RBI
- 2025: 32 HR, 90 RBI in 132 games — led the Pacific League in both categories
- 2026: .313 AVG, 32 HR, 82 RBI in 128 games — and the league batting title
Combined across three seasons: .294 AVG, 89 home runs, and 237 RBI in 363 games. In 2024, he also set the longest consecutive-game hitting streak in franchise history at 25 games.
The Fighters weren’t doing him a favor by bringing him back. They were trying not to lose the best hitter in the league.
These are the numbers Reyes never managed to sustain over a full MLB season. He hit 37 home runs with Cleveland in 2019, but consistency was always the issue. In Japan, he found the environment to fix that.
Why This Is Bigger Than One Paycheck
Reyes’s deal isn’t just a personal win. It’s a signal about where the NPB market is heading for Caribbean players. For decades, going to Japan was seen as a last resort for guys who couldn’t hold a roster spot in the majors. What’s happening with Reyes — and before him with Raidel Martínez — shows the NPB is becoming a genuine first-tier destination for sluggers who don’t fit the defense-and-speed model that currently dominates MLB.
Japanese baseball, fueled in part by the global Shohei Ohtani effect and the NPB’s growing presence in Latin markets, is now willing to pay top dollar for pure power. Reyes will turn 34 by the time this contract expires. He’s going to earn more hitting home runs in Hokkaido than most MLB teams would have offered him in guaranteed money. That says something about him — but it says even more about what the NPB has become.
