Yoshinobu Yamamoto is headed for the Dodgers
The right-handed star from Japan chose Los Angeles over both the Mets and the Yankees on a 12-year, $325 deal
The Mets will have to look elsewhere for starting pitching, it would seem.
On Thursday night, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the star right-handed pitcher from Japan, agreed to a 12-year, $325 million contract with the Dodgers including the $50 million posting fee to his former team, the Orix Buffaloes in the NPB, which will bring the total out of pocket for the Dodgers to $375 million, according to ESPN and other reports.
Yamamoto will receive two opts outs - one after year five and another after year eight, according to SNY.
The Mets did match - but did not exceed - the Dodger offer of 12 years and $325 million, according to SNY.
Yamamoto, 25, emerged as the best and most valuable free agent starting pitcher on the market upon being posted. He began his pitching career as an 18-year-old in the NPB League in 2017, and has been a dominant force over his seven-year career in Japan, having spent his entire career with the Orix Buffaloes.
He has a lifetime 1.72 ERA in 188 games with the Orix Buffaloes over 897 innings, having allowed 633 hits and only 36 home runs with 922 strikeouts during that span. He recently won his third-straight NPB Eiji Sawamura Award after posting a 17-6 record and a 1.16 ERA in 2023 (equivalent to MLB’s Cy Young Award in Japan). He threw a no-hitter against Chiba Lotte in September - during which Yankee GM Brian Cashman was in attendance for - becoming the first NPB player in their history to throw no-hitters in consecutive seasons.
Yamamoto also pitched in the 2023 World Baseball Classic for Team Japan and helped Team Japan win a gold medal in the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
The Mets scouted Yamamoto earlier in 2023 and met with him twice as part of their recruiting effort in November and December. A contingent of Mets officials flying to his home in Osaka, Japan before the winter meetings, and then met with him again (reportedly) at the home of Mets owner and CEO Steve Cohen along with his wife Alex, team president of baseball operations David Stearns, manager Carlos Mendoza and pitching coach Jeremy Hefner last week.
The second meeting reportedly came at the request of Yamamoto.
Like Kodai Senga, Yamamoto features a fork ball as his out-pitch but it doesn’t have quite the same movement as Senga’s “ghost fork.” He doesn’t have the same fastball velocity as Senga either, but is younger and has tremendous command, particularly in the bottom of the zone which explains his incredibly low home run rate.
Unfortunately for the Mets, their recruiting effort and financial might went for naught with Yamamoto, who will join Shohei Ohtani in Los Angeles as the two biggest free agent acquisitions in baseball this winter.
The challenge ahead for Yamamoto is adjusting to the big league game, that which includes but is not limited to fewer days of rest in between starts and the texture of the baseball, all of which are different than that in the NPB League.
As for the Mets, other top of the market free agent starting pitching options are generally limited to Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery but according to The Athletic, they’re unlikely to pursue top of the rotation help now, instead focusing on patching the rotation with starters seeking one or two-year deals to give the Mets short-term flexibility heading into next winter, when a stronger free agent class is expected to present itself.
This is disappointing, but not exactly unexpected. It had been reported Yamamoto wanted the cachet of an iconic team, and Steve Cohen can’t buy that for him with the Mets. The Dodgers right now are the destination in the sport with one superstar after the another signing big deals with them. Of course, teams don’t win championships in December and while the Dodgers most certainly have the best roster in the sport right now, they still need more pitching and to get through 162 games starting at the end of March.
As I wrote last week, plan B really shouldn’t be a surprise, either. It sucks and is disappointing, but that’s all.
Should the Mets - in their current state especially - be doling out long-term contracts to 30-plus pitchers, especially those who are very likely to underperform those contracts? The Mets don’t exactly have a history of doing well in free agency anyway, and that’s due in large measure to the state of the free agent market in that free agents are typically 30-plus and their best days are usually behind them. Sure, they get bits and pieces of what these players once were, and sometimes they tease that they might actually be what they were in the past.
But most of the time, for any team, this is not the case. Sometimes, these long-term deals do work out for clubs. Max Scherzer’s deal with the Nationals was one of the great free agent deals of all time for both sides, The Mets got a positive outcome with both Curtis Granderson and Bartolo Colón, among others.
But teams rarely want to give out such deals, especially to pitchers who aren’t in their 20s anymore. I get it - as great as Johan Santana was with the Twins and at times with the Mets, that was a problematic deal for at least half of those six years simply because he was hurt the majority of that time.
That’s where Yamamoto would’ve been different for the Mets and why they pursued him as hard as they did. He just finished his age-24 season in Japan, and starting pitchers - especially the elite ones - don’t become free agents in this sport at that age.
But alas, he’s a Dodger now.
I am not excusing the Mets by any means in their failed pursuit of Yamamoto, the state of the franchise today, their inability to offer both cachet and stability to any prospective free agent. This is at least partially why Yamamoto will not be a Met, and the Mets have a lot of work to do to restore credibility in all of those areas.
Again, it’s disappointing, but the outcome and new path isn’t a shock. That the Mets are shaping up to be an “if everything goes right” club in 2024 is disheartening and discouraging and perhaps the most frustrating, but that’s also not a surprise, either.
The Mets will still need to find additional starting pitching, but also invest resources into the bullpen while also procuring at least one bat for the lineup. They can fill their lineup gaps with players such as Justin Turner, JD Martínez, maybe Teoscar Hernandez. They can also invest in one or two year deals for some big arms for the bullpen and shorten games that way as well.
I thought we were going all in on Ohtani- struck out there, and now this. Bah Humbug, Mets!
This take is totally ridiculous:
“I am not excusing the Mets by any means in their failed pursuit of Yamamoto, the state of the franchise today, their inability to offer both cachet and stability to any prospective free agent. This is at least partially why Yamamoto will not be a Met, and the Mets have a lot of work to do to restore credibility in all of those areas.”