Yoshinobu Yamamoto has found his new home
by Cary Osborne
It was when Yoshinobu Yamamoto was 19 years old that he first envisioned himself pitching on a Major League mound.
It just so happened that his vision occurred at Dodger Stadium when he watched as a fan while Kenta Maeda, wearing №18 for the Dodgers, pitched in the postseason.
Now Yamamoto will be wearing the №18 for the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium with the possibility of 12 chances to pitch in the postseason.
“From today moving forward, I promise to all the fans of LA that I will focus my everything to become a better player and to become a world champion as a member of the Dodgers,” said Yamamoto on Wednesday. “I will stop simply admiring the players that I looked up to and rather strive to become the player that others want to become.”
The Dodgers and the 25-year-old right-handed pitcher finalized a 12-year contract on Wednesday, and he was introduced during a press conference at Dodger Stadium. The deal gives the club the elite pitcher of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league. Yamamoto won three consecutive Pacific League Most Valuable Player and Eiji Sawamura Awards (the league’s equivalent to the Cy Young Award), leading the NPB’s Pacific League in ERA, wins and strikeouts in each season.
Among the many adjustments to the Major Leagues will be workload, as Yamamoto was starting once a week in NPB. But Yamamoto, who led the Pacific League in innings pitched two of the last three seasons, has shown throughout his decorated career an ability to handle pressure and challenge.
“Being able to watch Yoshinobu pitch — the stuff is special, and the command is something that I haven’t seen,” said Dodger General Manager Brandon Gomes. “It is up there with the upper echelon of guys that can command the baseball. There’s no question in our mind that his commitment and dedication to taking care of himself that he will get in a good routine and on that rotation schedule at some point, and that’s just something we can talk through as a group.”
Yamamoto and the addition of Tyler Glasnow, who the Dodgers acquired in a trade on Dec. 16, give the Dodgers immediate top-of-the-rotation arms to go with the returning frontline starter Walker Buehler and young Bobby Miller, who started the Dodgers’ second postseason game in 2023.
“I think the honest answer is you can never have enough (starting pitching), as I think that all of us that follow baseball realize that. But certainly, the landscape of our starting staff has considerably changed over the last few weeks,” said manager Dave Roberts. “It’s hard to compare year to year, players to players, staffs to staffs, but this is a pretty good staff we’ve got.”
Yamamoto has won the World Baseball Classic (2023), NPB’s Japan Series (2022) and an Olympic gold medal for Japan (2021) over the last three years. He said the Dodgers’ commitment to winning was the main draw.
“Obviously the Dodgers are a very historic franchise, but more than that, winning now, winning into the future was probably the most important thing,” Yamamoto said.
Yamamoto acknowledged that part of his talks with the Dodgers included discussions with key players, including newly signed Shohei Ohtani. The opportunity to play alongside Ohtani for years to come, Yamamoto said, is meaningful.
Ohtani signed a 10-year deal with the Dodgers on Dec. 11. Yamamoto’s 12-year deal is the longest given to a pitcher in Major League history.
“The fact that he’s done what he’s done in the NPB is unique,” Gomes said. “His age, what we know about the person, that entire combination of it all is something that we felt was special and something that we felt comfortable in making that investment.”
Yamamoto said he understands the adjustments and challenges ahead of him. Included in that is a new country. He showed one way on his first day as a Dodger how he will be ready for it all.
Yamamoto, who relied on an interpreter on Wednesday, stood in front of a microphone in Centerfield Plaza at the beginning of his press conference.
The first words out of his mouth were in English.
“Good afternoon,” he said. “My name is Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the LA Dodgers. I am beyond ecstatic to become a member of this historic franchise and cannot express how much it means to me to be able to call Los Angeles my new home.”
