Penn State baseball signs ‘one of the top arms in Japan’ for 2027
Penn State baseball is adding one of the best college pitchers in Japan.
Genei Sato will join the Nittany Lions in February, although he will not pitch for them until 2027.
Sato, who is in his third year at Sendai University in Japan, is a pitcher with good velocity who was expected to be a first round pick in the 2026 Nippon Professional Baseball Draft.
He’ll be a starter for the Nittany Lions, and most of his recent scouted outings came for the Japanese national team against the American collegiate national team. In those outings, he came out of the bullpen and threw his fastball 97 to 99 mph.
“As a starter you’re talking about 92 to 97 (mph fastball) with two [quality] offspeed pitches to go with it,” Penn State baseball coach Mike Gambino told the Centre Daily Times. “And he’s fairly raw, which I think is really exciting.”
Sato is choosing to come to the United States to play baseball in an unusual way compared to most players from Japan, who usually play in the NPB before being posted as free agents for MLB teams to try to sign. Instead, he will be able to enter the 2027 MLB Draft after pitching for the Nittany Lions next season.
Adding him to the program was a group effort, according to Gambino. The compliance department in athletics, admissions at the university and even the Asian Studies department helped get Sato to the Nittany Lions. And it helped that the university has added recent high-level athletes from outside the country in hockey player Gavin McKenna and wrestler Masanosuke Ono.
“That’s part of what attracted him, was we were able to say, look, we can do this as a university,” Gambino said. “So all those people in the background — that’s what I think a lot of people don’t realize. When you sign a kid like this, and people will say, the baseball staff, or we did a good job. It’s the entire athletic department, the university, that’s involved, and that’s not lost on me and not lost on our program.”
Sato will arrive in the United States in early 2026, but is not expected to begin classes at Penn State until the summer sessions begin.
And ultimately, what he does for the Nittany Lions could help with something Gambino has already done — making Penn State baseball much more of a player in the Big Ten and, eventually, nationally.
“You’re talking about one of the top arms in Japan,” Gambino said. “The fact that we have shown enough to attract a talent like this, both in our short time here, and what we have done in our other places, that a guy that can go wherever he wants, chose Penn State — I think it also says a lot about the university, too. Because one of the things he fell in love with in this process is not just what our program is about and stands for, but what Penn State, what the community, what this area, Happy Valley — he fell in love with the whole thing.”
