Thoughts on Japanese right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto's 12-year, $325 million free-agent contract with the Dodgers, which includes a $50 million signing bonus and no deferred money, according to a league source:
First the numbers. They are breathtaking.
Yamamoto, 25, received the highest guarantee for a pitcher, $1 million more than Gerrit Cole, before he ever threw a pitch in the majors. Thanks to his relatively young age and the competition he generated among the game's biggest spenders, he was in the right place at the right time. And boy, did he capitalize.
The Dodgers' total payout for Yamamoto, including a $50.625 million transfer fee to his former club, the Orix Buffaloes, will exceed $375 million. Their combined investment this offseason in Yamamoto, Shohei Ohtani and Tyler Glasnow, excluding Ohtani's moves: more than $1.2 billion.
By extending the contract to 12 years through Yamamoto's age-36 season, the Dodgers lowered their luxury tax bill. Yamamoto's average annual value of $27.08 million will be the 34th highest in major league history, just ahead of new Dodgers teammate Freddie Freeman's $27 million.
According to Fangraphs, the Dodgers' luxury tax bill is about $282 million, about $15 million below the highest threshold. The team could still trade for another starting pitcher with Yamamoto, Glasnow, Walker Buehler and Bobby Miller. You could also look to upgrade at shortstop.
Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto at the World Baseball Classic earlier this year. (Rob Tringali /WBCI / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
So much for the idea that Ohtani doesn't want to play with his Japanese compatriot Yamamoto or vice versa.
Ohtani's massive deferrals helped make this deal happen. He also played a role in recruiting Yamamoto and attended the team meeting with the pitcher along with several other Dodgers stars.
Yamamoto is described as someone who desperately wants to be in the spotlight and is somewhat of the opposite of Ohtani in personality. But he clearly wasn't worried about being overshadowed by the game's biggest star.
The pressure on Dave Roberts, soon entering his ninth season as Dodgers manager, will reach new levels. And it didn't exactly fade from all that.
Roberts, 51, led the Dodgers to five 100-win seasons, two 90-win seasons and a World Series title during the shortened 2020 season. He may have had his best performance in the regular season, but the Dodgers were defeated by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the Division Series. They still haven't won a World Series in a full season since 1988.
Their roster includes three likely Hall of Famers: Ohtani, Freeman and Mookie Betts. Their roster includes the oft-injured Glasnow, Buehler after Tommy John surgery and Yamamoto, who is adjusting to a new league, a new country and a new culture. And the expectations will be enormous.
Roberts is under contract for two more seasons.
Perhaps the best hope for the other suitors from the Yankees, Mets and Yamamoto was that Andrew Friedman had rarely won at the top of the market since he took over as the Dodgers' president of baseball operations in October 2014. The owner's business interests should play almost no role.
The Yamamoto deal more than doubled Friedman's previous high in free agency before this offseason, $162 million for Freeman for six years. Betts signed a heavily deferred, 12-year, $365 million contract extension in the middle of the pandemic. Friedman lost to the Yankees on Cole. He only offered Bryce Harper a short-term contract. He wasn't that serious about Corey Seager.
In some ways, Yamamoto is his best chance.
Get ready for the season of Scott Boras. Boras represents the top four remaining free agents on The Athletic's Top 40 Big Board – center fielder Cody Bellinger, left-handers Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery and third baseman Matt Chapman. He also represents the two most sought-after pitchers on the trade market – White Sox right-hander Dylan Cease and Brewers right-hander Corbin Burnes.
Boras' free agent roster isn't without flaws, but in a talent-starved market, he's well-positioned to take advantage of some of the Ohtani and/or Yamamoto losers, most notably the Giants and Red Sox. The Giants have already signed one of his clients, outfielder Jung Hoo Lee, to a six-year, $113 million contract that many in the industry considered overpaid.
Boras' remaining free agents also include designated hitter JD Martinez, right winger Frankie Montas and lefties Hyun-Jin Ryu, Sean Manaea and James Paxton.
How do you define “full throttle”? That was the term Red Sox chairman Tom Werner used to describe the team's approach to the offseason when he named Craig Breslow chief baseball officer. But so far, outfielder Tyler O'Neill has been the Sox' most notable addition.
Snell or Montgomery represent an obvious pivot for a team in need of a quality starter. But even then, the Sox could struggle to compete in an AL East that includes the 101-win Orioles, the always-competitive Rays, the rotation-rich Blue Jays and Juan Soto's Yankees.
Could Jordan Montgomery wear pinstripes again this offseason? (Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
For the Yankees, landing Yamamoto on Soto would have been a George Steinbrenner-esque twist. It did not happen. The Yankees are offering $300 million for Yamamoto, a league source told Brendan Kuty of The Athletic. Maybe they didn't want to offer Yamamoto more than the $324 million they gave Cole. But they could have remedied this situation, embarrassing as it may have been, fairly easily.
Cole can opt out after the 2024 season, and if he invokes that clause, the Yankees can eliminate that possibility by adding a 10th year for $36 million. That would bring his total guarantee to the team to $360 million, eclipsing Yamamoto. If the Yankees want, they could even try to extend Cole beyond that.
As it stands, they need at least one more starter after failing to land Yamamoto and have at least talked internally about reuniting with Montgomery. They could also try to fill the bullpen. As competitive as their division is, as disappointing as it was last season, they can't stop.
And the Mets, you ask? After failing to sign Yamamoto, will owner Steve Cohen really settle for a series of smaller additions as the team looks toward 2025 and beyond?
The Mets are signaling, as Will Sammon of The Athletic wrote, that this is their plan. Given the questions surrounding remaining free agents and the difficulty of acquiring top talent without giving up quality young players, this could be a smart plan. But Yamamoto was a perfect fit and the Dodgers agreed to Cohen's $325 million offer. Perhaps the Mets' only chance was to make a bid so high that no team could have matched them.
A percentage of Mets fans will be patient, just as a percentage of each team's fans are now conditioned to “trust the process.” The next test for Cohen and new president of baseball operations David Stearns will be first baseman Pete Alonso, who is eligible for free agency after the 2024 season. If anything, Alonso's influence on the team could only grow stronger.
Finally, I repeat the first paragraph of my column after the Dodgers signed Ohtani: “The usual howls arrive. The big market teams ultimately have the best players. A $700 million contract is outrageous. Baseball needs a salary cap.”
The howls will only get louder now that Yamamoto has picked the same team as Ohtani and received the largest pitching contract in baseball history. I stand by everything I wrote in my Ohtani column, in which I argued that baseball is not broken. But as the pay gap between the haves and have-nots widens, the next round of collective bargaining could become another epic battle.
(Top photo by Yamamoto: Koji Watanabe/Getty Images)