The Los Angeles Dodgers are swinging for the fences in building the best team possible. After signing Shohei Ohtani to a ten-year, $700 million contract, they traded for Tyler Glasnow, who signed a five-year, $135 million extension. They’re not done because they signed international free agent Yoshinobu Yamamoto to a 12-year, $325 million deal.
That’s the most money guaranteed to a pitcher before making their first Major League Baseball throw. The Dodgers spent $1.161 billion on those three players, hoping they will make a difference starting in the 2024 MLB season.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto will earn the most guaranteed dollars ever by a pitcher in his $325M deal with the Dodgers, per @Feinsand. pic.twitter.com/1nTFmZaw7b
— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) December 22, 2023
The Dodgers hope that Yamamoto will live up to the hype. He has dominated Nippon Professional Baseball, becoming an All-Star, a Triple Crown winner, a Pacific League MVP, and a Best Nine awardee from 2021 to 2023.
In the same stretch, he earned three Pacific League Golden Glove Awards and three Eiji Sawamura Awards (equivalent to MLB’s Cy Young Award). Yamamoto also won the 2022 Japan Series with the Orix Buffaloes.
Yamamoto was lights out during the last NPB season, posting a 17-6 record and a 1.16 earned run average. He struck out 169 batters and had a 0.884 WHIP in 164 innings. He had a 1.68 ERA and a 15-5 record the year before.
Yamamoto’s signing bolsters the Dodgers pitching rotation, which already has Glasnow, Walker Buehler, Bobby Miller, and Emmet Sheehan. Ohtani will join the fray in 2025 after he was prohibited from pitching next season due to elbow surgery.
Los Angeles’ pitching staff could get stronger if three-time Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw decides to return to the Dodgers after undergoing shoulder surgery.
Despite winning 100 games last season, the Dodgers fell to eventual National League Champions Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2023 NL Division Series. Arizona won all three games with a total score of 19-6.
-Lance Fernandez