From Dodger Insider magazine: The pride and fire of Yoshinobu Yamamoto
Editor’s Note: This story is from the pages of Dodger Insider magazine, 2024 Volume 3. Magazines are available at entry at parking stands at Dodger Stadium.
by Cary Osborne
Orix Buffaloes manager Satoshi Nakajima didn’t have to say a word. As he approached the pitcher’s mound at Kyocera Dome Osaka on Oct. 28, Yoshinobu Yamamoto walked down the hill and handed over the baseball.
Yamamoto’s historic career in the Nippon Professional Baseball league never had a game like this.
The best pitcher in his league, and possibly the best player in his league — according to the awards he won the previous two seasons — had just surrendered his seventh run to the Hanshin Tigers in Game 1 of the Japan Series.
In the opening game of the Japanese professional league’s equivalent to Major League Baseball’s World Series, its biggest star suffered the biggest setback of his career.
He responded seven days later.
With his team facing elimination in the series, down three games to two, Yamamoto pitched one of the greatest games ever in a Japan Series.
Nine innings. One-hundred thirty-eight pitches. A Japan Series record 14 strikeouts.
Yamamoto allowed one run and nine hits, walking none, helping lift his team to a 5–1 victory that Nov. 4.
“It’s just like during a regular season — sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad,” Yamamoto recalls of the bounceback. “Out there, I just don’t look back. I just try to focus on the next game.”
Much had changed over the next five months in the life of Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
He won his third consecutive Eiji Sawamura Award — the honor that goes to NPB’s top pitcher — and third straight Most Valuable Player Award. He signed with the Dodgers for 12 years, the longest contract for a pitcher in Major League Baseball history. The Japanese native moved to the United States and completed his first Spring Training camp. And then he made his MLB debut in Seoul, South Korea, on March 21.
One inning. Forty-three pitches. Five runs.
Nine days later on March 30, Major League Baseball got a better understanding of who Yamamoto is.
Yamamoto moved around the quadrants with his four-seamer. His splitter and curveball evaded swings. His five-shutout-inning outing against the St. Louis Cardinals was the single-game representation of what his reputation had been in Japan. The 25-year-old would have pitched longer had it not been for a 45-minute rain delay during the game.
“As you’re around players more, you start to learn more about them,” says manager Dave Roberts. “I think with Yoshinobu, there’s a lot of confidence, and there’s a lot of pride and fire. And appreciating the (12-year) contract and his part of the deal, I think he takes it personal and took it personally. And so he was really intent on pitching well for his home debut.”
Yamamoto was one of the most coveted pitchers on the free-agent market in the offseason. Though starting pitchers under 6 feet tall are a rarity — just six pitchers of that stature made at least 10 starts in 2023 — the book on the 5-foot-10-inch Yamamoto is that he is exceptionally athletic and coordinated. His elite command gives him the ability to trust that he can throw a strike with any pitch, regardless of the count or hitter. Hence the reason why Major League teams lined up for his services.
“The first time you see him — the repeatability of his delivery, the ability to execute to both sides of the plate, the quality of the stuff — that all adds up to a front-of-the-rotation starter,” says Galen Carr, Dodger vice president of player personnel.
Dodger Executive Vice President and General Manager Brandon Gomes and Roberts both mentioned the work Carr and his team had put into scouting Yamamoto, giving the organization a clearer picture of his stuff and his makeup.
As the industry prepared for the likelihood of Yamamoto being posted by the Orix Buffaloes after the 2023 season, the Dodgers bore down in 2022 and increased their work on gathering information and evaluating the Japanese pitcher. Carr described the process as an effort between scouts and Japanese-speaking non-scouting staff working together to build a profile of the pitcher.
Yamamoto visited Dodger Stadium in the 2023 offseason after being posted by the Buffaloes, giving the Dodgers a better opportunity to get to know the person.
“I think that our on-field impression of him was carried into our off-field impression of him in that the kid has a lot of confidence in his own abilities,” Carr says. “He’s not intimidated whatsoever. He doesn’t operate with a whole lot of uncertainty. He has a ton of intent and conviction. So much of our impression of Yoshinobu in terms of how he goes about his work seems to reflect the type of person he is. It was also clear that he has a good sense of humor.
“He’s in many ways super-convicted and intentional, but also relaxed in a way that I think is an unusual combination. It seems like an impressively well-balanced collection of emotions and characteristics. That sort of explains why he’s become so good at what he does.”
Yamamoto — a 2020 Olympic Gold medalist, a 2022 Japan Series champion, a 2023 World Baseball Classic champion and a seven-year NPB veteran — wasn’t naive about making the jump to the Major Leagues and the challenges that would come with it.
The MLB baseball has lower seams and is a little firmer than an NPB baseball, which factors into higher pitch and exit velocities. He says the long travel and the new environment as a non-English speaker are two things he envisioned would present immediate challenges.
“I knew I was going to have to make a lot of adjustments,” Yamamoto says. “However, I still wanted to come here. …I’ll make adjustments as needed. When an issue comes, I just face it.”
That happened quickly.
Yamamoto allowed 14 hits and walked four batters over 7 2/3 innings in his final two Spring Training starts. The first Major League batter he faced in a regular season game, San Diego’s Xander Bogaerts, ambushed him with a first-pitch single, leading to Yamamoto pitching from the stretch throughout the rest of his difficult outing in Seoul.
Between his MLB debut and his second start, Yamamoto recalibrated. He adjusted his glove positioning in the stretch, which more closely mirrored how he started his delivery in Japan. It helped him sync up his mechanics.
The true test was his third Major League start, on a cold day in Chicago on April 6.
Cubs left fielder Ian Happ led off the game with a double. Two batters later the bases were loaded. Yamamoto escaped without having allowed a run.
Two more batters reached in the second inning. Again, no runs allowed.
Yamamoto pitched his second straight five-inning scoreless game.
In the six games since his Major League debut, Yamamoto has a 1.64 ERA, 0.97 WHIP and has struck out 40 batters to seven walks in 33 innings.
The ability to modify and have success so quickly was something Dodger coaches forecasted early from Yamamoto.
Dodger pitching coach Mark Prior was first impressed by Yamamoto’s discipline in his work leading up to his pitching and how it led to precision on the mound. The example Prior provided was Yamamoto’s structured javelin routine, where he would throw rubber-tipped projectiles on the field in order to get a feel for certain movements in his body.
Yamamoto says the purpose of the javelin throw is to ensure his pitching mechanics are right.
“He’s really dialed into himself and what he needs to do to be successful,” Prior says. “And I don’t mean successful like wins, losses and strikeouts, but how to execute pitches. How to deliver the best pitch possible. And I think that’s something that’s been impressive to watch. Because it takes a lot of mental discipline.
“And I think that’s the one thing as the course of the season goes on: Can he maintain that level of discipline? And I think so,” Prior adds. “Obviously, he doesn’t do what he did in Japan for those years without being able to maintain it.”
He could have stayed in Japan and added to his growing legend.
No player in NPB history has ever won four consecutive MVPs or four straight Sawamura Awards. Yamamoto’s Japan Series title in 2022 is what he called the peak accomplishment of his career. The Orix Buffaloes were a last-place team in 2019 and 2020. With Yamamoto as their ace, they developed into a championship team. Maybe they could have been a dynasty with him leading the way.
But Yamamoto had set his sights on the Major Leagues long ago. When he was 19 years old, he visited the U.S., and among his stops was Dodger Stadium, where he watched fellow countryman Kenta Maeda pitch in a postseason game.
“I was carrying that desire to try for the big leagues even before watching Kenta’s playoff outing,” Yamamoto says. “But after watching Kenta pitch in the playoffs at Dodger Stadium, that made my desire stronger.”
Now that he’s here, there’s a new desire.
“The big leagues is the highest level,” he says. “I want to win a world championship.”
