Yamato Maeda

Yamato Maeda is registered simply as "Yamato" — one name, no surname — and has been since 2007. In a sport where most players are announced by family name, that choice quietly signals someone comfortable being his own category. Born in 1987 in Kanoya, Kagoshima, he played for the Hanshin Tigers and then the Yokohama DeNA BayStars before retiring after the 2024 season. At 177 cm he is not physically imposing by professional standards, and he is not the kind of player whose highlights lead the evening broadcast. His value shows up in the parts of the game that box scores handle badly: reading a ball off the bat, cutting off a gap, ending an inning that was about to unravel. Defensive specialists tend to be undervalued by fans and overvalued by teammates, and I lean toward the teammates. A roster full of sluggers still loses games it should have closed out. Players like Yamato are why the closing happens.

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)

Yamato Maeda

Name (Japanese)

大和

Reading

やまと

Born

November 5, 1987 (age 38)

Origin

Kanoya, Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan

Height

177 cm

Occupation

baseball player

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Scorpio / Rabbit

• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/yamato.maeda.11.05/
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamato%20Maeda
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E5%92%8C%20(%E9%87%8E%E7%90%83)
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q724550

Tags

• Kagoshima Prefecture
• baseball player

Last updated

September 25, 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.