To Dodgers Fans Everywhere, It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas With Reports Of Yamamoto Signing

True story.

I was watching a movie last night: Moneyball. It’s based on the Michael Lewis book about baseball executive Billy Beane, who figured out how to build a winner for an Oakland Athletics team that didn’t have two nickels to rub together.

The Dodgers don’t just have two nickels to rub together. They have a treasure chest filled to the rusty hinges with gold doubloons. They showed us that when they signed superstar Shohei Ohtani for 10 years and $700 million almost two weeks ago.

So while I watched Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, squeezing an amazing 103 wins out of marginal players he’d signed on the cheap for the A's, the Dodgers reached into their treasure chest for doubloons that weren’t bound for Ohtani and rubbed ’em together like Aladdin’s lamp. And what should appear in a Dodger uniform but young Japanese superstar pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who according to news reports has signed a 12-year deal worth $325 million. (MLB.com is among the sites reporting the deal based on a source and says "The team has not confirmed the deal, which is pending a physical.")

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If Ohtani was the most sought after free agent in baseball this offseason, Yamamoto was Number 2. He’s 25 years old. He’s been pitching for the Orix Buffaloes since he was 18. For the last three seasons, he’s been the best pitcher in Japan.

For every batter that Yamamoto walks, he strikes out five. For every nine innings he pitches, the other team scores fewer than two runs. Yamamoto has won the Sawamura Award, Japan’s version of the Cy Young Award, in each of the last three seasons.

Here, we would call that kind of baseball record “Koufaxian,” except the great Dodger pitcher Sandy Koufax won the National League’s Most Valuable Player Award only once. Yamamoto has won the Pacific League MVP Award three times.

Los Angeles Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani puts on a baseball cap during a news conference at Dodger Stadium Thursday, Dec. 14, 2023, in Los Angeles.

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Marcio Jose Sanchez

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AP

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Tyler Glasnow is now a Dodger.

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Julio Aguilar

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Getty Images

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He was a teammate with Ohtani when Japan won the World Baseball Classic last spring. Now they’re teammates again.

There’ll be plenty of time during the 2024 baseball season to chatter about whether the Dodgers are so loaded with talent now that you can engrave their name on the 2024 World Series trophy. (They also just signed standout pitcher Tyler Glasnow — who grew up in Santa Clarita — from the Rays.) Or about what a gigantic flop they’ll be if they stumble in the first round of the playoffs again as they have in the past two seasons.

For now, let’s just stand back in awe. Add up Yamamoto’s contract and the Ohtani deal, and the Dodgers have handed out more than $1 billion in free agent money in just 12 days.

It’s “Moneyball” — only with real money.