Steve Webb
LOS ANGELES, CA — In case you haven’t noticed it yet, Andrew Friedman knows what he’s doing. Like, a lot. In this offseason, Friedman has taken a 100-win team and made it exponentially better. His latest coup, snatching starter Yoshinobu Yamamato out of the clutches of a couple of deep-pocketed New York teams, shows just what a master Friedman is at his craft. Your 2024 Los Angeles Dodgers are the team to beat for the World Series.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto was dominant for the Orix Buffaloes last season, and has put together an incredible resume as he moved into his free agency. In seven seasons in NPB, this righty has posted a gaudy 1.82 ERA. and 0.92 WHIP in just under 1,000 innings pitched. He has already made five All-Star teams, tossed four no-hitters, won three Japanese Triple Crowns, two Sawamura Awards (NPB’s Cy Young), and two MVPs.
In a way, Yamamoto makes more immediate sense for the Dodgers than does Ohtani, given their sorry state of starting pitching at the end of 2023. In his final start in Game 6 of the Japan Series, Yamamoto was nearly unhittable. He threw a gargantuan 138-pitch, 14-strikeout complete game, giving up only one run and keeping Orix in the series. That kind of performance will certainly raise some eyebrows stateside. Now of course, we have to mention that he got shelled in the start before it, and the win only extended the Buffaloes’ season by one game, as they lost on Sunday to the Hanshin Tigers, who rode a 4-RBI performance from former Dodger Sheldon Neuse to their first Japan Series victory since 1985.
The Athletic describes Yamamoto pitch mix thusly: “His fastball velocity has touched 99 mph but tends to sit in the 94-95 mph range. It’s the movement profile combined with deception that makes him so effective. His low release point and riding action allow him to get whiffs on the fastball in the zone. He’s also able to induce plenty of chase with a splitter that is only 5-6 mph slower than his fastball but tumbles out of the zone. Yamamoto can use his cutter against both right-handed and left-handed hitters. Additionally, he lands his rainbow curve in the zone more than 70 percent of the time, which makes it an ideal pitch to steal early-count strikes. Even his fifth-best pitch is considered potentially devastating: a sweeping slider that has so little vertical break that it could become a bigger part of his pitch mix against big-league hitters.”
Andrew Baggarly, Ken Rosenthal and Will Sammon in The Athetic, 12/21/23
And with the move, the frustrating end to the Dodgers’ 2023 season is coming into sharper focus. Yes, it would have been nice to make a deeper run last year, but Friedman knew that he was keeping his powder dry for this big offseason push. Andrew Friedman doesn’t want to leave LA with just one ring on his finger. He wants, to quote another LA superstar, “Not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven.” Of course, that particular prediction didn’t quite work out as planned. But for Friedman and the Dodgers, it seems like they’ve locked up another decade of excellence at Chavez Ravine.
Already there is whining out there in social media land about the “fairness” of the Dodgers signing the best two players available to these huge contracts. And, if I were a small-market fan, I might be singing the same tune this morning. There is some truth to the statement that the Dodgers are doing something that say, the Minnesota Twins, could never do. But to my small-market friends, I offer this response. “Who was the National League’s representative in the Fall Classic last year? And who did the Dodgers play in 2020 in the World Series?” Answers: the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Rays. With baseball’s current playoff format, more than ever, having a “super team” guarantees you absolutely nothing in October.
Now, I’m a bit old school and romantic about this. In many ways the 2017 Dodgers will always be my favorite team. That loveable collection of cast-offs and homegrown talent gave LA some of the the best baseball it’s ever seen. But that is not the only way to build a team. And the reason the Dodgers have this money to spend on guys is that it keeps leading the league in attendance year after year after year. So, small-budget teams, one is way to increase your team’s chances of signing some of these guys is to get off the couch, stop whining, and head out to your own ballparks. That’s how to compete with the big boys. To quote Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff. “No bucks, No Buck Rogers.”
But the impact of this signing goes far beyond just baseball excellence. This has the potential to be a Fernando-mania-like perfect storm that might completely transform the Dodgers’ fan base. Of course, the Dodgers will still rely on its legion of Latino fans that have supported the team for the last four-plus decades. But get ready to see a whole lot more Asian faces in the stands next year. With Japan’s two biggest stars playing on the same team, there is sure to be a spike in interest in the team, not only in Japan, but all over the world.
Of course, we have to be careful when trying to translate Japan League success into MLB greatness. We all remember the disaster that was Hideki Irabu and his tragic run with the Yankees. However, I don’t think Yamamoto is nearly in that danger. His off-the-charts stuff will play in this league. Just how well it will play remains to be seen. There is definite risk involved. But it’s a roll of the dice that could end up transforming the franchise forever.
Banzai!
