Posted on 12/21/2023 8:28:22 PM PST by chrisinoc
Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the top pure pitcher on the free-agent market, has agreed to terms with the Los Angeles Dodgers on a 12-year deal worth $325 million, CBS Sports HQ insider Jim Bowden has confirmed. That figure would make this the largest contract in MLB history ever given to a pitcher, edging out Gerrit Cole's $324 million deal with the Yankees. Yamamoto had been posted for MLB consideration by the Orix Buffaloes earlier in the offseason, and Yamamoto's now former NPB team will now receive a substantial posting fee from the Dodgers.
The bidding for Yamaoto picked up momentum earlier on Thursday, and the Dodgers, Yankees, and Mets solidified their standing as the favorites in those final hours. In the end, though, Yamaoto chose to join Shohei Ohtani in L.A. Ohtani earlier this month signed a $700 million contract with the Dodgers that included salary deferrals on a massive, heretofore unseen scale. That flexibility permitted the Dodgers to continue spending in such a manner, and indeed that was the expectation when Ohtani signed the record pact.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbssports.com ...
I wonder if ticket prices will go up? 😆😊😄😂
They’re like democrats. Fixing the game to where you can’t beat em’. Using money.
I’m waiting for the Cowboys to sign a sumo wrestler to stop the brotherly shove.
“The rich get richer, and inherit the meek!”
~ Mark Heard
He’ll blow his arm out in 2 years with his current pitch repetoire. MLB is a little different than NPB and he’ll end up overthrowing. He’ll be getting TJ surgery by 2025.
And they still won’t win the Series.
The Yankees used to ALWAYS win these battles. No longer. No one wants to play in New York, a city in a steep, ugly decline.
Shhhhhhh...
Let that sleeping dog lie!
Don’t they have some sort of luxury tax, so big market clubs can’t simply outspend small market clubs into oblivion?
Great grandson.
“The Yankees used to ALWAYS win these battles. No longer. No one wants to play in New York, a city in a steep, ugly decline.”
Smart move not joining the Yankees. They will never win a World Series with Aaron Boone as the Manager. You can give him an all star lineup and by mid season the team batting avg would be 125.
It doesn’t matter to the f’n Dodgers. If his arm blows out next year, the f’n Dodgers would just pony up a billion dollars for the next one.
| 2023 | |||||||
| Slugging | Contract | ||||||
| Position | 2023 | Percentage | Price | Year of | Contract | ||
| Team | ( SLG ) | ($ millions) | Contract | Term (years) | Age | ||
| Shohei Otani | DH | LAA | 0.654 | $725 | 2023 | 10 | 29 |
| Corey Seager | SS | TEX | 0.623 | $325 | 2022 | 10 | 27 |
| Matt Olsen | 1B | ATL | 0.604 | $168 | 2022 | 8 | 27 |
| Ronald Acuna | RF | ATL | 0.596 | $100 | 2019 | 8 | 21 |
| Mookie Betts | RF | LAD | 0.579 | $365 | 2021 | 12 | 27 |
I'd like to weigh in on these huge contracts with Japanese players, especially Otani.
I gathered some stats from a couple of websites: MLB Player Contracts and a high-to-low chart of the Major League's 2023 Slugging Percentages.
I merely looked up the MLB contracts for the top 2023 best hitters in the Major Leagues by SLG — slugging percentage — a stat that measures the value of a hitter in winning games.
Otani (with his recent contract for $725 million) had the highest SLG in 2023 and shortly following him is Corey Seager who signed his own contract for $325 million in 2022.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only way I can reconcile the $400 million gap between Otani and Seager is to factor in the value of television replay rights and merchandise sales coming back to the Los Angeles Dodgers from Japan.
My wife and I have been living in Japan for a year and hope to retire here. And during the baseball season not a day goes by where the Japanese morning news/variety shows don't talk about and show TV clips of what Otani did yesterday in the States — his homeruns, his hits, pitching, and clips of him doing batting practice.
Watching him has become a national addiction. And a big factor in that is everybody here knows the highest quality baseball is in the U.S. major leagues.
Couple that with the fact that schoolboy baseball is the biggest national sport — by a long shot — in Japan. Every year high schools across the country compete to become the best team in the nation, followed through weeks of local, regional, and nationally televised matches.
Otani grew up in that culture of rigorous high school training and desire to become number one. His roots go back to Iwate prefecture (1 million population) in northern Japan, as cold and mountainous as New Hampshire in the winter.
Consider too that Otani is tall, handsome, and despite his incredible fame and success speaks with humility, which the Japanese greatly treasure.
So all you really need to consider is the value of television commercials in Japan that flank coverage of Otani. It's huge. And think of the national pride 120 million Japanese feel when they see Otani succeed: he becomes the topic of morning chats at the train station, convenience store, and office coffee machine.
When you add that all up, the Dodgers may actually be getting Otani at a bargain.
The main reason for Ohtani’s greater contract value is that much of the money is deferred. Taking inflation into account the value of Ohtani’s contract is similar to that of Seager and Betts. Ohtani asked all of his suitors for a largely deferred contract so that the team that signed him would be able to sign additional free agents to be more competitive.
I don’t think that’s true at all. Dodgers just spent a billion dollars on two players. One with repeated injury issues and can’t pitch all of year 1. The other untested. It may work. It may not work. They overpaid by at least a hundred million each to get them. They have decided to push all the chips to the middle of the table this offseason.
NPB = Nippon Professional Baseball
Any relation?
Doubt it. Yamamoto is a very common name in Japan.
Ohtani also pitches. He’s a two-fer. He deserves much more than anyone else.
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