Tatsuya Imai throws in the inning during the 2023 Asia Professional Baseball Championship Final between South Korea and Japan in Tokyo. Gene Wang / Getty Images

The Los Angeles Dodgers have targeted the biggest stars who began their professional careers in Japan, and have reaped the benefits with Shohei Ohtani winning consecutive National League MVPs and Yoshinobu Yamamoto earning the most recent World Series MVP award after his heroic performance against the Toronto Blue Jays. Even Roki Sasaki became a key postseason reliever after a rocky start to his major-league career.

So it seems close to inevitable that Tatsuya Imai, the No. 10 free agent on The Athletic’s Big Board who got posted on Nov. 18, would end up in L.A., right?

Not so fast, according to what Imai said in an interview with Daisuke Matsuzaka on the show, “Hodo Station.”

“Of course, I’d enjoy playing alongside Ohtani, Yamamoto and Sasaki,” Imai told the former Boston Red Sox and New York Mets starter, “But winning against a team like that and becoming a World Champion would be the most valuable thing in my life. If anything, I’d rather take them down.”

Imai, 28, just had a dominant season in Japan with a 1.92 ERA over 163 2/3 innings with 178 strikeouts, five complete games and three shutouts for the Saitama Seibu Lions. However, he isn’t known for the same kind of overpowering stuff that Yamamoto possesses. Yet his moxie and seeming willingness to carve his own path in the majors could sound enticing to several other teams in the market for starting pitching.

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“If there were another Japanese player on the same team, I could just ask them about anything, right?” Imai said. “But that’s actually not what I’m looking for. In a way, I want to experience that sense of survival. When I come face-to-face with cultural differences, I want to see how I can overcome them on my own — that’s part of what I’m excited about.”

One team that comes to mind as a potential destination for a guy who’d like nothing better than to knock out the Dodgers’ trio of fellow countrymen is the San Francisco Giants, a possibility referenced by The Athletic’s Grant Brisbee:

They need someone to get outs and eat innings now, but they’d also like a side of “higher ceiling.” The best part is probably that Imai would be an extremely easy sell to Giants fans at the box office. If he has one competitive bone in his body, he would look at the team that employs some of the best Japanese players of all-time and want to join their direct rival, just to beat them. Think of the Dodgers series alone.

This all applies to the Padres, too, but they’re in the middle of a potential sale, and they have their own free agents to worry about. We don’t know if they’ll be in a lot of bidding wars this offseason.

It won’t be easy for the Giants, particularly since several other teams would probably be willing to pony up the nine-figure deal that Imai is expected to command on the open market. New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said during the GM meetings that it’s been “too many years” since the Yankees featured a star from Japan. The Giants have also been reluctant in recent years to hand out long contracts to free-agent pitchers since signing Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija in 2016 and adding Mark Melancon a year later.

Other big-market clubs, including but not limited to the Chicago Cubs, New York Mets and Boston Red Sox, could also be in the mix. And the Blue Jays, who came very close to taking down the Dodgers, could lose Chris Bassitt and/or Max Scherzer this offseason.

The Dodgers might not go out without a fight in an attempt to add Imai to their already deep rotation. They’ve reaped so many benefits on and off the field from their Japanese stars that a recruiting pitch might still make Imai at least consider the opportunity. But if he’s truly interested in defeating the Dodgers and overcoming the “cultural differences” of heading to North America and joining a new league, he shouldn’t have a problem finding suitors who’d love to see him do just that.