Yoshinobu Yamamotos contract could reach $300 million, but is he worth the risks? (2024)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — He’s 25 years old, six months younger than Adley Rutschman. He has thrown zero pitches in American professional baseball, making him a theoretical unknown.

So if you didn’t know Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s name or story and we asked: How much money would a major-league team pay a guy like this, what would you guess? Six years, $52 million? That was the original Daisuke Matsuzaka contract with the Red Sox.

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What about six years, $126 million? That was the original Yu Darvish contract with the Cubs.

Or maybe seven years, $155 million? That was the original Masahiro Tanaka contract with the Yankees.

All right then. The guessing is closed. Now here’s the verdict: Those guesses are guaranteed to be wrong, wrong and wrong.

Yamamoto won’t begin meeting with teams on his short list until next week, major-league sources tell The Athletic. But already, the Winter Meetings buzz from officials with multiple clubs is that his deal will hit record levels. And not just for a pitcher from Japan, but also very possibly for any pitcher in history not named Gerrit Cole.

Eight years, $240 million? That seems to be the most conservative guess from interested teams at this point. But 10 years, $300 million? That would no longer shock anyone. And of course, in Yamamoto’s case, a hefty posting fee to the Orix Buffaloes, his team in Nippon Professional Baseball, will be piled on top of that deal.

Now let that price tag sink in. Can we agree this is no Cyber Monday sale?

How high will the bidding go for Yoshinobu Yamamoto? $300 million is possible. (Megan Briggs / Getty Images)

Just for the record, other than Cole — who signed for nine years, $324 million with the Yankees in December 2019 — no pitcher on this side of the Pacific has ever inked a deal worth $300 million-plus. And beyond Cole, no pitcher has even crashed through the $250 million barrier. Next highest? The $245 million the Nationals bestowed (regrettably) on Stephen Strasburg after his 2019 postseason heroics. So we’re talking about nearly uncharted territory.

Yet some team — the Mets? The Giants? The Yankees, perhaps? — seems prepared to guarantee huge dollars, and possibly 10 years, to a pitcher who is 5-foot-10 … who has never pitched in a five-man rotation … who has never pitched a season with an American baseball … and who has a multitude of other baseball and cultural adjustments ahead of him.

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It’s kind of amazing when you think about it that way, isn’t it? So when baseball’s general managers appeared Tuesday at their only mass media availability of the Winter Meetings, we made sure to bring up Yamamoto’s name with as many of them as possible.

Why are teams so energized by the possibility of signing him? And why are they willing to accept the risks that a contract like this will pose? Here’s a sampling of what some of those executives see — and not just the ones who are gearing up to possibly pay the right-hander.

Asked if Yamamoto would look good in Yankees pinstripes, GM Brian Cashman didn’t bob, weave or dodge the question at all.

“Yes, I would agree with that,” he said. “I personally saw him. We’ve scouted (Orix) extensively. And I think he’s going to be a really successful pitcher anywhere he pitches on the planet. He’s a free agent, and we’ll see where it takes us.”

Yoshinobu Yamamoto is an accomplished pitcher at age 25. But how will he handle the transition to MLB? (Kyodo News via Associated Press)

Rangers GM Chris Young, meanwhile, hasn’t scouted Yamamoto in person. And the Rangers aren’t viewed as Yamamoto shoppers. But Young is a former pitcher, a student of pitching and interested enough to have watched a ton of Yamamoto video. So not surprisingly, his review sounded much like Cashman’s.

“Well, just he’s really, really talented,” Young said. “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.”

We could recount lots more scouting reports with those characteristics. But take our word for it. If we’re merely talking about stuff, talent, athleticism, and Yamamoto’s sensational track record in Japan, there is no debate, anywhere, about what feels like a potential one-of-a-kind international phenomenon.

There’s also no need to deluge you with a slew of stats. But it’s hard to ignore this one: Over the past three seasons in Japan, Yamamoto’s ERAs were 1.39, 1.68 and 1.16. Whew.

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Who was the last qualifying starter in our fair land to spin off ERAs under 2.00 three years in a row? How about Grover Cleveland Alexander — in 1915, ’16 and ’17.

Since it’s the 21st century, Yamamoto actually gets compared more to Pedro Martinez than Grover Cleveland Alexander. But again, let’s make this clear: It isn’t the elite talent level that’s in question. It’s this:

In the case of a smallish pitcher from another continent, there’s so much more to it. How can any team be confident about guaranteeing 10 years — or even eight — to a man with so many adjustments to tackle and so many questions to answer? That’s the $300 million question. So we asked it.

Is it fair to call Yamamoto unique? Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer couldn’t bring himself to use that word.

“I don’t think he’s unique,” said Hoyer, who also scouted Yamamoto in person last season. “I think he’s super-talented. I don’t think he’s unique. But I think certainly there have been a lot of really good pitchers that come here from Japan, and he’s certainly in that conversation.”

So was the journey to Japan to watch Yamamoto in person enough to provide that reassurance? Hoyer politely declined to get into anything he learned from that trip. But Cashman — who lucked into seeing Yamamoto pitch a no-hitter in September — was as unfiltered as ever when he was asked: “What did you learn from seeing him in person?”

“Nothing, to be quite honest,” Cashman replied. “It was just a really enjoyable experience. The fact that it was a no-hitter was really spectacular. It’s special whether you see that in high school, college, or the pro ranks. It made my trip worthwhile, flying all that way to watch the artistry play out, which was, again, really moving. For him to do that for his fans and his team as they were going through their playoff effort. It was cool.

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“(But) I didn’t learn anything new. 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.”

Let’s say this again, though. It isn’t the talent that’s raising the questions. It’s the uncertainty of what’s ahead and how Yamamoto will handle it.

The Red Sox signed Daisuke Matsuzaka to a six-year, $52 million deal in December 2016. (Chuck Solomon / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)

Major-league teams have faced that uncertainty for years, obviously. But is it possible there is less of it now than 10 or 15 years ago? No exec we spoke with was more adamant about that than Pirates GM Ben Cherington, who was with Boston for the pursuit of Matsuzaka over a decade and a half ago.

“He’s been an outstanding performer on the world stage,” Cherington said of Yamamoto. “Not just in Japan, but on the world stage. Every team has access to pitch data now. You can do the biomechanical assessment from a distance. He’s really good, you know? It’s not that hard to make the translations.”

Asked what he learned from the Matsuzaka experience that would apply now to the ability to project the longevity of someone like Yamamoto, Cherington made clear it’s a different universe, here in 2023 — and in more ways than most people would expect.

“Between that time and now,” he said, “with what has changed, it fundamentally changes our understanding of just how to measure certain things more precisely. So the things teams can do now, in terms of biomechanical analysis, without being in person with the guy, is just way more advanced than it would have been at the time that we were trying to do the same thing with Dice-K.

“You know, pitch-grade evaluation, as far as using data to assess pitches, is so different than when we were going through the same process with Dice-K. We were going through reports based on subjective scouting reports, and as much due diligence on character as we possibly could. Sure, we’re looking at performance, but it’s pretty top-level … like just, what were the raw results? A lot of the stuff that’s under the hood and available today just wasn’t available then. So it isa different ball game.”

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But is that data really enough to enable teams to predict the future — over the next decade, remember — of a player who is only 25 and has never been here or done this? Some teams are skeptical of that — and staying out of this sweepstakes.

An executive of one of those teams said he’s convinced that only one piece of data truly explains this frenzy over Yamamoto — the magic number, 25. As in: 25 years old.

That exec, who was granted anonymity so he could speak candidly, said there’s so much fluctuation in performance of all players, no matter where they’re from, that “I have a hard time predicting what a player is going to do nextyear, let alone in 10 years.”

So in a sport in which teams are increasingly reluctant to invest long-term in players in their 30s, this exec said he’s convinced that the temptation to sign a potential international superstar who is still five years away from turning 30 is fueling all of this. And he’s probably not wrong.

But does that mean some team is about to make a massive — not to mention massively expensive — mistake? That’s the biggest question no one in the sport can answer. The simple answer is: Let’s hope not.

“What I hear and see about him looks extremely exciting as a scouting person,” Orioles GM Mike Elias said. “He seems like a bright talent. And it’s great for our game when we get the best players from Japan.”

So if the bidding is headed to heights never seen before for one of those players, you know what the GMs doing the bidding would say to that? Ha. What else is new?

“Markets are always supply and demand, right?” Cashman said. “That’s what drives things. That’s the way the world works. Players might get more than maybe you might be comfortable with. But again, when teams are competing and they have that desperate need, that’s the business of baseball.”

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So Mr. Yamamoto, welcome to America. We hope you’re every bit as Pedro-esque as people say you are. And if not, well, never forget: It’s just business.

— The Athletic’s Brendan Kuty contributed to this report.

(Top photo of Yoshinobu Yamamoto: The Yomiuri Shimbun / Associated Press)

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