The allure of the Dodger blue strikes again.
Japanese star Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the Los Angeles Dodgers are in agreement on a 12-year, $325 million contract, sources told ESPN on Thursday, ending a frenzied free agency with the largest deal for a pitcher in years and value in Major League Baseball history.
The deal, for which Los Angeles will pay an additional $50.6 million posting fee to Yamamoto’s previous team, the Orix Buffaloes, pushed the Dodgers’ free agent spending this winter to more than $1 billion, following the 10-year, $700 million contract they gave to Shohei Ohtani, Yamamoto’s countryman.
Yamamoto, who has two opt-out clauses in the contract, will receive a $50 million signing bonus, sources said. Unlike Ohtani’s deal, in which $680 million is deferred 10 years out, Yamamoto’s contract does not contain any deferred money.
Yamamoto’s agreement, which was earlier reported by ESPN’s Buster Olney, beats Gerrit Cole’s $324 million guaranteed from the New York Yankees by $1 million.
Embed from Getty ImagesThe deal, which is pending a physical, comes after a wild 48 hours in which the Dodgers outbid the New York Mets, who offered a similar contract, and the New York Yankees, who were long the favorite but ended up offering $300 million, sources said. The Philadelphia Phillies, San Francisco Giants, Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays were in the bidding, too, but could not overcome the Dodgers, who have now accounted for more than half the spending across MLB in free agency this winter.
The 25-year-old Yamamoto, a right-hander who has taken home three consecutive MVP awards and Sawamura Awards, Nippon Professional Baseball’s equivalent of the Cy Young, has dominated NPB like nobody in the league’s 74-year history since transitioning from the bullpen to Orix’s rotation back in 2019. Over 820⅓ innings of work, he has posted a dazzling 1.65 ERA, struck out nearly five times as many hitters as he has walked and allowed one home run every 28 innings.
With a heater that runs up to 99 mph, a devastating split-fingered fastball and a looping curveball that often buckles batters’ knees, he brings as good an arsenal as any pitcher who has come to Major League Baseball from Japan. At 5-foot-10 and 176 pounds, Yamamoto lacks the size of a typical ace or frontline starter, but ballclubs interested in him were not concerned, focusing more on the quality of stuff his body can generate.
He does so through a unique training regimen that prioritizes flexibility and movement over raw strength. Yamamoto does not lift weights, relying instead on a routine of body-weight exercises, stretches and a significant amount of throwing, from tiny soccer balls to mini javelins to long toss and bullpens with regulation-sized baseballs. His athleticism, evaluators said, allows him to impart force on the ball disproportionate to his size.
Accordingly, teams have lined up for more than a year to sign him. They expected him to be posted after he turned 25 in August, as he no longer would be subject to MLB rules that force players to sign international amateur deals, in which compensation is limited to bonus pools of less than $10 million, before their 25th birthday.
Dodgers president Andrew Friedman, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, Giants president Farhan Zaidi and Chicago Cubs president Jed Hoyer were among the executives who traveled to Japan this year to see Yamamoto in person.
Once Yamamoto was officially posted November 20, with a 45-day window for him to sign, Mets owner Steve Cohen and president David Stearns flew there to meet with him. Yamamoto’s grand tour around the United States included another stop with the Mets, a pair of visits with the Yankees and meetings with the Dodgers, Giants, Phillies and Red Sox.
The get-togethers helped Yamamoto crystallize his priorities before the teams started talking terms of the deal with Yamamoto and his agent, Joel Wolfe, on Monday. Of Yamamoto’s five excellent seasons as a starter, 2023 was perhaps the best, with a 1.21 ERA over 164 innings, a 6-1 strikeout to walk ratio and just two home runs allowed.
