Even if you’re not much of a baseball fan, you’ve probably heard of Shohei Ohtani — one of the best batters in baseball, one of the best pitchers in baseball (though he’s recovering from an injury), and the ONLY guy who’s been doing both at a high level. And six years into his MLB career, probably the best baseball player ever to come over from Japan.
Well, tomorrow, the bidding war begins for the next big thing from Japan. Get ready to hear a lot of talk about Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
To be fair, he’s not the “next Ohtani” because he’s “just” a pitcher; as far as we know, he’s nothing special with a bat. But calling Yamamoto “just a pitcher” is like saying Beethoven “wrote a few tunes”.
In fact, Yamamoto has been far and away the best starting pitcher in Japanese baseball the past three years running. Consider these numbers that look like something out of a videogame:
- 2021 – 18-5, 1.39 ERA. 193.2 innings, 124 hits, 40 walks, 206 strikeouts.
- 2022 – 15-5, 1.68 ERA. 193 innings, 137 hits, 42 walks, 205 strikeouts.
- 2023 – 17-6, 1.13 ERA, 171 innings, 119 hits, 28 walks, 176 strikeouts.
Each of those seasons won Yamamoto both the Triple Crown (leading the league in ERA, wins, and strikeouts) and the Sawamura Award (the equivalent of the Cy Young Award). He’s also had 5 All-Star appearances, 2 MVP awards, 2 Gold Gloves, and he’s also thrown two no-hitters. And if you want a little extra, he held his own at the World Baseball Classic earlier this year as well, against some of the world’s best players.
And the best part… Yamamoto only just turned 25 in August, so theoretically he’s still got some of his best baseball ahead of him.
But that means we need to talk about “the posting system”. In order to keep the peace between MLB and Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB — the Japanese major leagues) and keep MLB from using their deep pockets to sign players at will, there’s a formal system for allowing players to come over. If an NPB player who hasn’t reached free agency yet wants to come to MLB, he has to seek his team’s permission to leave, and if the team agrees they “post” his rights for MLB teams to bid on. There’s a negotiation period of 45 days, after which the player signs with an MLB team, and the Japanese team that owned the player’s rights (in this case, the Orix Buffaloes) would get a one-time payment for releasing him. If no one signs the player (obviously not a concern for Yamamoto, but has happened for some lesser players), they can return to their NPB team with no harm done.
(A little bit of history, Until 2018, it used to be the rights auction would come first — the MLB teams would submit bids to the Japanese team for the right to negotiate with the player, and ONLY the team that won that auction would be eligible to sign the player. So the player didn’t really have full free agency; they basically got told which MLB team they would be allowed to play for. One side effect was this gave the MLB team all the leverage when negotiating a contract because the player’s only Plan B was staying in Japan for another year. As of 2018 they changed the system to give the players more negotiating power — the player can now negotiate freely with any/all MLB teams, and the posting fee is merely a percentage of the contract he actually signs for.)
So let’s put some estimated numbers to it. To keep the math simple, let’s say Yamamoto signs for $200M total (it’s the total value of the whole contract, so if he signs a 6 or 7 year deal, that’s easily possible). The posting fee is 20% of the first 25M ($5M), 17.5% of the second 25M ($3.75M), and 15% of everything over $50M ($22M in this case). So on a $200M contract… over 5+ years, that could happen… the posting fee to Orix would be $31.875M. So you can see why even though Orix would probably love to keep Yamamoto, they probably wouldn’t mind $30M+ in their bank account either. Especially not when he’s a seven-year veteran and would be eligible to leave as a free agent in a few years anyway.
So what’s team get for that money? Yamamoto’s fastball sits pretty comfortably around 95mph, but he can pump a few extra clicks when he has to. He also has a curve and a split-finger fastball. He throws all three with better-than-average control. He technically has a slider as well which he hasn’t used much, but some people suggest he might start leaning on it a little more in the majors. The fastball-curve-splitter combo mostly offers vertical movement; a slider might be a way to mix in some side-to-side action. He’s also been fairly durable — he pitches deep into games, and I haven’t really been able to find any injury information worth mentioning. Beyond the inherent risk that comes with any pitcher (it’s an unnatural body movement), there’s nothing that pegs Yamamoto as a health risk.
So who’s going to get him? Line up the usual suspects. The New York and LA teams seem like they’d have to be in the mix. Philadelphia is firmly in win-now mode, so they might take a look. Chicago and Boston generally have deep enough pockets, but I’m not sure they’re ready to contend yet. I could see a few of the smaller-market West Coast teams like Seattle and San Francisco try to make a splash because they have some interest in actively courting a Japanese audience. (Seattle in particular tends to keep a few Japanese players on the roster because they’ve cultivated a bit of a Japanese fan base over the years.)
It’s hard to read the tea leaves when Yamamoto just posted today and the bidding doesn’t even open until tomorrow, but it feels like the Mets might have a bit of an edge. Two reasons. First, their owner Steve Cohen is obscenely wealthy and not afraid to spend it, so much so that one of last year’s subplots was other owners complaining that Cohen’s free spending was making them look bad. But there’s also the fact that they signed another Japanese pitcher, Kodai Senga, last year, and Senga has been openly courting Yamamoto to come to New York. (Or as openly as one can do without risking tampering charges.) And there’s also a little culture shock for players coming over, so Yamamoto might appreciate having a fellow countryman already on the roster. If you put a gun to my head today, I’d say the Mets, but there’s a long 45 days ahead of us.
Mental Zoomies 