A few more quick thoughts after Yoshinobu Yamamoto goes to the Dodgers

It has been not even a full 24 hours since Yoshinobu Yamamoto agreed to a 12-year contract worth $325M with the Dodgers, and I am no less let down or frustrated. I thought I might get over it quickly, but nope. There was always a chance Yamamoto would go elsewhere, I knew that, but I didn’t expect to find out the Yankees made the third best offer. From Jeff Passan:

The deal, which is pending a physical, comes after a wild 48 hours in which the Dodgers outlasted the New York Mets, who offered a similar contract, and the New York Yankees, who were long the favorite but ended up offering $300 million, sources said.

Andy Martino and Jack Curry, the latter of whom should never be doubted on such matters, say the Mets offered the same 12-year, $325M contract as the Dodgers. The Yankees stopped at 10 years and $300M, which they felt was a “generous” offer. And it was a generous offer! $300M is a lot of money, and the Yankees did offer the highest average annual value ($30M vs. $27.1M).

But the Yankees still made the third best offer. We know this because Yamamoto had two $325M offers in hand while the Yankees offered $300M, and $325M is a bigger number than $300M. The Yankees spent the last however many weeks leaking to everyone (mostly Martino) that they love Yamamoto and were confident they’d be able to sign him, and then they offered 8% less.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe the Yankees could’ve upped their offer to $325M and Yamamoto still would have gone to the Dodgers, or the Dodgers would’ve gone to $340M or $360M. Who knows? We’re left guessing because the Yankees did not raise the offer to match what was on the table. They made an offer that was easy to discard because it was 8% lower than the others.

(Think about what the Dodgers are building. Young baseball fans in Japan are going to grow up rooting for which MLB team now? The Dodgers are making massive – generational – inroads into the Japanese baseball community.)

Losing out on Yamamoto was going to suck no matter what. It sucks even more to find out the Yankees came in comfortably below the Dodgers and Mets with their offer. They were going to have to really blow Yamamoto away, both financially and with their sales pitch, and it doesn’t seem like they came close to doing either. They certainly didn’t do so financially.

Did the Yankees do anything to distinguish themselves during the recruiting process? Steve Cohen and David Stearns flew to Japan to have dinner with Yamamoto (and his mother, reportedly), then Cohen invited him into his home. The Dodgers were able to roll out the red carpet with Shohei Ohtani, giving them a distinct and perhaps insurmountable advantage.

The Yankees did what? They met with Yamamoto in Los Angeles like several other teams, then had a hastily put together meeting in New York after Yamamoto was already in town to meet with Cohen. Brian Cashman went to Japan to watch him pitch, sure, but so did every other interested GM. Was Randy Levine supposed to win Yamamoto over or something?

It’s becoming clear the Yankees aren’t a destination anymore. They’re almost 15 years removed from their last championship and they have as many pennants in the last 20 years as the Royals. Soon they’ll start drafting kids who’ve never seen the Yankees win a title. Wearing the pinstripes and being a Yankee doesn’t have the same appeal as it once did.

And that’s a problem. The Yankees aren’t the YANKEES anymore, they’re just a team with a lot of money. And they frequently spend that money poorly because the front office has blind spots (if not fallen behind the times), plus ownership is unwilling to be a trailblazer with payroll. The Yankees wait for other teams to set payroll records, then they begrudgingly play catch up.

This is all self-inflicted. The Yankees have opted for half-measures over better but higher-priced players and needlessly reset their luxury tax rates the last few seasons. They thought they were smarter than they are and that led them to an 82-80 record in 2023, which complicated their Yamamoto pursuit. Did they really expect him to take $25M less to join an 82-80 team?

The other day Aaron Boone said he spoke to Yamamoto about the Yankees' rivals, and how intense postseason games against the Astros and Red Sox can get. I read what Boone said and all I could think to myself was, “geez, I hope Yamamoto doesn’t google how those postseason series went.” The Yankees either don't understand or don't accept what they are. They seem to think it’s still the late 1990s and the baseball world bows down to them.

The Yankees seemingly crafted their offseason (and their next few years?) around Yamamoto. They traded Mike King and Drew Thorpe for Juan Soto because they badly needed offense, and they could replace the pitching now and in the future with the 25-year-old Yamamoto. It was a sound plan assuming they’d put their all into signing Yamamoto. Instead, the third best offer.

I’ve seen a lot of “$300M is crazy for a guy who hasn’t thrown a pitch in MLB!” takes and I get it, but that is missing the forest for the trees. Yamamoto is the reigning three-time MVP of the highest level of professional baseball outside MLB. NPB teams have Hawk-Eye too. MLB clubs have all that cool pitch data on Yamamoto. These are not the wild west days of YouTube scouting Daisuke Matsuzaka.

Now the Yankees are backed into a corner where they either have to give Jordan Montgomery or Blake Snell a regrettable contract (regrettable because most long-term contracts for 31-year-old pitchers are regrettable) or further trade from their farm system. They can’t go into next season with the pitching as is. It would completely defeat the purpose of the Soto trade.

The Yankees are much improved. The outfield is miles better than it was in 2023. And, frankly, if Aaron Judge and Anthony Rizzo don’t stay healthy, and Anthony Volpe doesn’t take a step forward, and Nestor Cortes and Carlos Rodón don’t bounce back, then Yamamoto wasn’t going to make much of a difference anyway. The guys on the team must be better, first and foremost.

But a potential difference-maker – a 25-year-old potential difference-maker – is off the board and the Yankees did not put their best foot forward come offer time. Yamamoto was never taking less to come to the Yankees. They were going to have to be right there with the Dodgers, if not outbid them. In the end, it’s just another franchise-altering talent in his mid-20s getting away after the Yankees made something less than a full effort to get him.