By Andrew Baggarly, Ken Rosenthal and Will Sammon
Yoshinobu Yamamoto has yet to stand on a major-league mound, but that hasn’t deterred an abundance of baseball executives and talent evaluators from describing him as one of the most talented pitchers on the planet.
He’ll certainly be paid like it.
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 signing bonus of $50 million and does not include deferrals — smashes the record for the largest sum guaranteed to a Japanese arrival and beats New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole’s contract (nine years, $324 million) for the largest deal ever awarded to a pitcher. This does not include two-way player Shohei Ohtani’s 10-year, $700 million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The agreement ends a frenzied and highly competitive pursuit for Yamamoto, a right-handed pitcher whose uncanny command, unique pitch characteristics and total dominance of Nippon Professional Baseball — he won his third consecutive Sawamura Award, or Japan’s version of the Cy Young Award, this past season while pitching the Orix Buffaloes to the Japan Series — allowed scouts and executives to project him comfortably as a big-league staff ace in waiting.
In combination with his attributes and mound artistry, it was Yamamoto’s youth — he turned 25 in August — that compelled teams to view his free agency as an exceptional opportunity. And with almost every big-market club a robust participant, it became clear by mid-November that the bidding would soar past all earlier projections. Yamamoto’s deal dwarfs the seven-year, $155 million contract that the Yankees gave to Japanese right-hander Masahiro Tanaka before the 2014 season.
GO DEEPER
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 past 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 in their top executives to see him pitch multiple times this past season. When Yamamoto threw his no-hitter on Sept. 9 against Chiba Lotte Marines, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman was among those in the stands.
“I didn’t learn anything new,” Cashman told reporters at the Winter Meetings earlier this month. “I had already been educated enough on him over the course of our scouting years knowing the type of talent he was. He just showed it. But it wasn’t surprising.”
The New York Mets were so dedicated in their pursuit that owner Steve Cohen flew to Japan before the start of the Winter Meetings to meet personally with Yamamoto, getting the jump on other teams that had lined up visits with him at Wasserman headquarters in Los Angeles later in the month.
Yamamoto’s major-league suitors did not appear to view his 5-foot-10, 176-pound frame as a significant risk factor. He demonstrated durability this past 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 in the tank on Nov. 5 to help the Buffaloes stave off elimination in Game 6 of the Japan Series, throwing a 138-pitch complete game while matching Yu Darvish’s Japan Series record of 14 strikeouts.
“He’s really, really talented,” Texas Rangers GM Chris Young told The Athletic’s Jayson Stark. “I mean, it’s amazing. It’s a unique fastball profile, great command, competitiveness, and it’s explosive. And really, I think it bodes well to translate to Major League Baseball very, very well.”
MLB organizations have eyed Yamamoto ever since he was an 18-year-old making his debut with Orix in 2017. His fastball velocity has touched 99 mph but tends to sit in the 94-95 mph range. It’s the movement profile combined with deception that makes him so effective. His low release point and riding action allow him to get whiffs on the fastball in the zone. He’s also able to induce plenty of chase with a splitter that is only 5-6 mph slower than his fastball but tumbles out of the zone. Yamamoto can use his cutter against both right-handed and left-handed hitters. Additionally, he lands his rainbow curve in the zone more than 70 percent of the time, which makes it an ideal pitch to steal early-count strikes. Even his fifth-best pitch is considered potentially devastating: a sweeping slider that has so little vertical break that it could become a bigger 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-making traditions that date to the sixth century. He’ll arrive in the big leagues next season as a fully formed ace. The Dodgers are betting a bundle that he won’t crack in the major-league kiln.
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(Photo: Charly Triballeau / AFP via Getty Images)
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