Former Kansas City Royals, Texas Rangers' Lefty Heads to Japan For 2024 Season

Former Kansas City Royals and Texas Rangers lefty Taylor Hearn is headed to Japan for the 2024 season.

The following comes from MLBTradeRumors, which includes a link to the Japanese language report:

The Hiroshima Carp of Japan’s NPB have signed a pair of hurlers who pitched in the majors this past season. 

According to Yahoo Japan (Japanese language link), the Carp have agreed to deals with left-hander Taylor Hearn and right-hander Thomas Hatch. 

The report indicates Hiroshima’s agreement with Hearn is worth $900K in total, while Hatch’s deal is reportedly worth a total of $1.3MM. Hatch was released by the Pirates late last month and was initially expected to sign with the Nippon-Ham Fighters prior to landing a deal with the Carp. Hearn, on the other hand, elected free agency back in October.

We recently had the information on Hatch heading overseas.

Hearn started the 2023 season in Texas for the World Series champion Rangers. He made four appearances there, pitching to a 10.29 ERA over 7.0 innings. He then made one appearance for the Braves, giving up four earned runs in 0.1 innings. Finally, he made eight more appearances for the Royals, surrendering seven earned runs in 7.2 innings.

His total ERA was 11.40 for the season.

He was actually an integral part of the Rangers in each of the last two seasons, serving as both a starter and a reliever. He went 6-6 over 42 appearances in 2021 and then went 6-8 over 31 appearances in 2022. He's made 25 starts in his career out of 101 games.

He's 12-15 lifetime with a 5.35 ERA.

If he's able to pitch well in Japan, perhaps he could return stateside in 2025.