Yusei Kikuchi

What I admire most about Yusei Kikuchi is his restlessness. He could have stayed a celebrated ace in Japan, but he chose the harder road across the Pacific, bouncing between Seattle, Toronto, Houston, and now the Angels. That willingness to keep proving himself in unfamiliar clubhouses, season after season, says a lot about his character. Coming out of Hanamaki Higashi in snowy Iwate, the same school that produced Shohei Ohtani, he carries a quiet toughness I find compelling. His 2017 Golden Glove hints at an overlooked completeness. I root for pitchers who refuse to coast, and Kikuchi clearly never has.

Name (English)

Yusei Kikuchi

Name (Japanese)

菊池雄星

Reading

きくち ゆうせい

Born

June 17, 1991 (age 35)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Gemini / Goat

Origin

Morioka, Iwate Prefecture, Japan

Height

184 cm

Occupation

baseball player

High school

Hanamaki Higashi High School

Awards & achievements

• 2017 Mitsui Golden Glove Award

• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/yuseik18/
• Xhttps://x.com/YuseiKikuchi16
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusei%20Kikuchi
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%8F%8A%E6%B1%A0%E9%9B%84%E6%98%9F
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8061867

Tags

• Iwate Prefecture
• baseball player

Last updated

2026-06-21

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.