LOS ANGELES — The Dodgers are getting everything they want for Christmas this year.
According to multiple reports, Japanese right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto has agreed to a 12-year, $325 million contract with the Dodgers. The deal includes a $50 million signing bonus but it does not include any deferred money. The Dodgers will now also have to pay his former team, the Orix Buffaloes, a $50.6 million posting fee.
The contract includes the most guaranteed money ever given to a pitcher, just topping Yankees right-hander Gerrit Cole, before the 25-year-old Yamamoto has ever thrown a pitch in MLB. It comes just 10 days after the Dodgers signed Yamamoto’s World Baseball Classic teammate Shohei Ohtani to the largest contract ever given to a professional athlete.
In between, the Dodgers acquired right-hander Tyler Glasnow and signed him to a five-year, $136.5 million contract extension.
The Dodgers have committed over $1.1 billion to those three players and made it a virtual certainty they will be well over the Competitive Balance Tax for years to come.
A three-time Pacific League MVP and Sawamura Award winner (the Japanese equivalent of the Cy Young Award), Yamamoto was the most coveted free-agent pitcher on the market this winter. According to multiple reports, the New York Yankees offered a $300 million contract and the New York Mets a deal similar to the Dodgers. Yamamoto chose the Dodgers.
Dodgers’ front-office officials, including President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman and Vice President of Player Personnel Galen Carr made multiple scouting trips to Japan as far back as Team Japan’s pre-WBC workouts last spring. When Yamamoto met with the Dodgers last week, Ohtani was part of the team’s contingent making their pitch along with Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman. Ohtani’s willingness to defer $680 million of his contract gave the Dodgers the flexibility to spend big to continue adding to the team.
“It was important to Shohei that this wasn’t the one move we were gonna make,” Friedman said at the press conference announcing Ohtani’s signing last week. “I think anyone who has watched us operate over the years (knows) we’re trying to add really good players at every turn.”
Yamamoto is not imposing physically at 5-foot-10, 175 pounds, but his fastball tops 95 mph and comes with a sharp-breaking split-fingered fastball and outstanding curveball. Since debuting as an 18-year-old, Yamamoto dominated Japanese hitters. In his three MVP seasons, he went 59-16 with a 1.65 ERA, 580 strikeouts and 110 walks in 550⅔ innings.
The Dodgers entered the offseason with little starting pitching depth and a rotation filled with question marks. That rotation is now fronted by Yamamoto, Glasnow and Walker Buehler.
