By Andrew Baggarly, Ken Rosenthal and Will Sammon
Yoshinobu Yamamoto may not be in the major leagues yet, but that hasn't stopped many baseball managers and talent evaluators from calling him one of the most talented pitchers in the world.
He definitely gets paid that way.
The Los Angeles Dodgers have agreed to terms with Yamamoto on a 12-year, $325 million contract, major league sources confirmed Thursday. The deal – which includes a $50 million signing bonus and no deferrals – breaks the record for the highest guaranteed amount for a Japanese signing, surpassing New York Yankees star Gerrit Cole's nine-year, $324 million contract ) for the largest deal ever awarded to a pitcher. This does not include two-way player Shohei Ohtani's 10-year, $700 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The agreement ends a hectic and hard-fought chase for Yamamoto, a right-handed pitcher whose uncanny command, unique pitching characteristics and utter dominance of Nippon Professional Baseball earned him the Sawamura Award, or Japan's version of the Cy Young Award, for the third consecutive year Last season, when he pitched the Orix Buffaloes for the Japan Series, scouts and executives had no trouble portraying him as a big-league personnel ace.
Combined with his attributes and impressive artistry, it was Yamamoto's youth – he turned 25 in August – that forced teams to view his free agency as an exceptional opportunity. And with almost every major club a strong entrant, it became clear in mid-November that the bidding would exceed all previous predictions. Yamamoto's contract dwarfs the seven-year, $155 million deal the Yankees gave to Japanese right-hander Masahiro Tanaka before the 2014 season.
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Who is Yoshinobu Yamamoto and why is he getting $325 million from the Dodgers?
Yamamoto entered the offseason as The Athletic's third-ranked free agent. He has posted ERAs of 1.39, 1.68 and 1.21 in each of the last three seasons for Orix. He led the league in 2023 with 169 strikeouts in 164 innings. He became the first pitcher in NPB history to throw a no-hitter in consecutive seasons. Several clubs flew their top managers to watch him pitch several times last season. When Yamamoto threw his no-hitter against the Chiba Lotte Marines on September 9, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman was in the stands.
“I didn’t learn anything new,” Cashman told reporters at the winter meetings earlier this month. “I had already gotten to know him well over the course of our scouting years and knew what a talent he was. He just showed it. But it wasn’t surprising.”
The New York Mets were so committed in their pursuit that owner Steve Cohen flew to Japan before the start of the winter meetings to meet with Yamamoto in person, giving a head start to other teams who later planned to visit him at Wasserman headquarters in Los Angeles provided per month.
Yamamoto's major league prospects didn't seem to view his 5-foot-10, 176-pound frame as a significant risk factor. He proved his endurance last season, which began in March when he pitched for Japan in the World Baseball Classic. At the end of a long year, Yamamoto had enough left on November 5 to help the Buffaloes avoid elimination in Game 6 of the Japan Series by throwing a complete game of 138 pitches, tying Yu Darvish's Japan Series record of 14 strikeouts achieved.
“He’s really, really talented,” Texas Rangers GM Chris Young told Jayson Stark of The Athletic. “I mean, it's amazing. It's a unique fastball profile, great leadership, competitiveness and it's explosive. And really, I think it bodes well and translates very, very well to Major League Baseball.”
MLB organizations have had their eye on Yamamoto since he made his Orix debut as an 18-year-old in 2017. His fastball velocity is around 99 mph but tends to be in the 94-95 mph range. It is the movement profile combined with deception that makes it so effective. His low release point and riding motion allow him to feel the fastball in the zone. He's also capable of inducing a lot of chases with a splitter that's only 5-6 mph slower than his fastball but falls out of the zone. Yamamoto can use his cutter against both right-handed and left-handed players. Additionally, he lands his rainbow curve in the zone more than 70 percent of the time, making it an ideal pitch for stealing early strikes. Even his fifth-best pitch is considered potentially devastating: a sweeping slider that has so little vertical break that it could become a larger part of his pitch mix against big league hitters.
Yamamoto is from Bizen, a city in Japan's Okayama Prefecture between Hiroshima and Osaka known for aquaculture and pottery traditions dating back to the sixth century. He will enter the big leagues next season as a fully formed star. The Dodgers are betting he won't crack in the major league oven.
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(Photo: Charly Triballeau / AFP via Getty Images)