Yoshinobu Yamamoto will reportedly sign 12-year contract with Los Angeles Dodgers

Major League Baseball

Updated Dec. 21, 2023 11:24 p.m. ET

Japanese ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto has reportedly found his MLB team.

Yamamoto has agreed to sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers, per YES Network. FOX Sports’ Ken Rosenthal confirmed the report. ESPN reports the deal is for 12 years and $325 million.

This would make it the biggest contract for any pitcher in history, eclipsing Gerritt Cole’s nine-year, $324 million pact with the Yankees by $1 million. The Dodgers would also need to pay a posting fee of over $50 million to Yamamoto’s former team, the Orix Buffaloes.

Yamamoto ranked second in FOX Sports’ MLB free agent rankings entering the offseason, trailing only his countryman Shohei Ohtani. Though Yamamoto has yet to prove himself at the MLB level, he led Nippon Professional Baseball with a 1.16 ERA in 2023, during which he also became the first pitcher in the history of the NPB League to throw no-hitters in consecutive seasons.

He also had a 176-28 strikeout to walk ratio over 171 innings pitched last season. Yamamoto has also won the NPB pitching triple crown each of the last three seasons, meaning he led the league in wins, strikeouts and ERA each time.

Yamamoto also helped Japan to a 2023 World Baseball Classic title alongside Ohtani in March 2023.

Here’s why FOX Sports MLB analyst Jordan Shusterman is so high on Yamamoto’s ability to succeed at the MLB level, from the beginning of the offseason:

Not only does Yamamoto bring plus velocity with a dastardly splitter, he also throws both a four-seam and two-seam fastball, a low-90s cutter, and a high-70s curveball. It’s an absurdly deep repertoire more in line with what we saw from Yu Darvish when he first came over from NPB, and he’s got near-elite command of every weapon. Yamamoto’s strikeout totals in NPH don’t wow as much as Darvish’s did, but it’s reasonable to assume he’d pursue more punchouts in MLB where hitters are easier to exploit for whiffs than the higher percentage of contact-oriented opponents in NPB. Other than his relatively diminutive frame, there’s not much more you want in a free-agent starting pitcher.

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