The days of the Yankees having the deepest pockets in MLB are long over.
Nearly 10 years after signing Masahiro Tanaka for seven years, $155 million, the richest contract signed by a pitcher leaving Japan for MLB, they have some competition for Japanese ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto: the Mets.
If either the New York team signs the two-time Pacific League MVP and recipient of Japan’s equivalent of the Cy Young award, they’ll have to surpass Tanaka’s deal – by a lot.
Per Mike Puma of The New York Post:
A person connected to the front office of a team that may pursue Yamamoto indicated there’s a good chance the Yamamoto bidding will start somewhere in the $200 million range for six or seven years.
That would give Yamamoto the third-largest contract in MLB history, trailing only Yankees’ Gerrit Cole ($324 million) and Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg ($245 million). Depending on the number of years, it would either be the sixth-largest (if it’s six years, he’d earn $33.3 million per year) or the eighth-largest contract (if it’s seven years, he’d earn $28.6 million per year) by annual average value.
Padres ace Yu Darvish has earned the most money, $188.4 million, after leaving Japan for the majors. If Yamamoto gets $200 million, he’d exceed that total by more than $11 million – that’s more than Yankees bust Sonny Gray, who is a Cy Young Award candidate, made this season.
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The Mets recently lost a “key voice” in Japanese player negotiations when general manager Billy Eppler resigned. Prior to that, the team was seen as the favorite to land the 25-year-old ace.
Tanaka signed with the Yankees while Eppler served as the team’s assistant GM in 2014; Shohei Ohtani opted to go to the Angels during Eppler’s tenure as the team’s GM; and Kodai Senga, who turned out to be the Mets’ ace, took his talents to Queens in large part because of Eppler.
With Eppler gone, the field is open for Yamamoto.
Manuel Gomez may be reached at
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