Yamamoto has indeed been connected to plenty of moneyed clubs such as the Mets, Yankees, Red Sox, Giants and others. MLBTR predicted him for a contract of $225MM over nine years.Ī projected contract of that size would normally restrict a player’s market to the top spenders but his age might open the door to some surprise bidders. That makes it extremely rare to have an opportunity to sign a player that is both this talented and this young. Players that come up through the affiliated ranks need to get six years of major league service time before reaching the open market, meaning they usually are close to or beyond their 30th birthday by the time they become free agents. In addition to the results, teams will be incredibly interested in the fact that Yamamoto is just 25 years old. He struck out 169 of the 636 batters he faced this year, a rate of 26.6%, while his 28 walks led to a rate of just 4.4%.
He has an earned run average of 1.82 over his seven seasons, including a ridiculous 1.21 mark in 2023. Primarily, he has utterly dominated hitters in his career in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball. The incredible popularity of Yamamoto is due to a couple of factors. Right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto has garnered the attention of many clubs around the league and Jon Heyman of The New York Post adds the Tigers and Diamondbacks to the list.
