Ryota Igarashi

Ryota Igarashi threw very hard for a very long time, and that combination is rarer than it sounds. Born in Rumoi, Hokkaidō in 1979, he made his name in the Yakult Swallows bullpen with a fastball that regularly cleared 150 km/h, took his shot in Major League Baseball, pitched for SoftBank after coming home, and eventually returned to Yakult to finish where he began. Our records list no awards for him at all, and that blank space says something honest about relief pitching. Hold the lead and nobody writes it down; give it up and everyone does. Trophies rarely find the seventh and eighth innings. What he built instead was two decades of managers deciding he was the one to hand the ball to in a tight game, which is its own kind of credential. Ending a career with the club that developed you is a rare and satisfying symmetry.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Ryota Igarashi

Name (Japanese)

五十嵐亮太

Reading

いがらし りょうた

Born

May 28, 1979 (age 47)

Origin

Rumoi, Hokkaidō, Japan

Height

178 cm

Occupation

baseball player

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Gemini / Goat

• Official sitehttps://www.ssu.co.jp/service/ssupeople/ryota_igarashi/
• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/ryota_igarashi53/
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryota%20Igarashi
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%94%E5%8D%81%E5%B5%90%E4%BA%AE%E5%A4%AA
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1044930

Tags

• Hokkaidō
• baseball player

Last updated

September 18, 2026

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.