LOS ANGELES — The big-spending Dodgers beat out at least a dozen other teams to procure the most coveted starting pitcher on the free-agent market, agreeing to terms on a 12-year, $325-million deal with Japanese right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto, according to a person with knowledge of the deal unauthorized to speak publicly.
Yamamoto, 25, is the team's third major acquisition in two weeks, joining two-way phenom Shohei Ohtani, who signed a record 10-year, $700-million contract on Dec. 14, and veteran right-hander Tyler Glasnow, who signed a five-year, $136.5-million extension on Saturday after being traded from Tampa Bay to Los Angeles.
And Ohtani, who has added "recruiting coordinator" to his already vast tool kit, helped make both deals happen, joining fellow most valuable player award winners Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman for last Tuesday's sales pitch to Yamamoto in Dodger Stadium and reportedly recording a video message to woo Glasnow.
"It was important to Shohei that this wasn't the one move we were gonna make, and I think anyone who has watched us operate over the years, we're trying to add really good players at every turn," Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said at Thursday's introductory news conference for Ohtani.
"We also gave our pledge 1/8to Ohtani to keep adding3/8, because that's something that was incredibly important to 1/8owner3/8 Mark Walter, and it's incredibly important to us, so those things were in perfect alignment."
The 5-foot-10, 176-pound Yamamoto, who joined Ohtani to help Japan win last spring's World Baseball Classic, was named Pacific League MVP for the third straight year in late-November after winning his third straight Sawamura Award, the Japanese equivalent of the Cy Young Award.
Yamamoto was officially posted by the Orix Buffaloes on Nov. 20 after going 70-29 with a 1.82 ERA in 172 Nippon Professional Baseball games, striking out 922, walking 206 and yielding an 0.935 WHIP (walks plus hits per inning) and just 36 homers in 172 innings. He went 1-0 with a 2.45 ERA with 12 strikeouts in 7 WBC innings.
Though not physically imposing, Yamamoto's four-pitch repertoire features a four-seam fastball that sits in the 94-95-mph range, with good ride from a lower release point, a nasty 90-mph split-fingered fastball that features 20 inches of vertical drop, and a high-spin-rate 77-mph curve with a whopping 77 inches of vertical drop.
