The SF Giants are expected to make some big acquisitions this offseason. San Francisco has already been tied to Orix Buffaloes star right-handed pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who will be posted following the season. Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi traveled to Japan to attend his latest start, according to a report by Roger Munter of There R Giants (subscription highly recommended). Yamamoto was the winning pitcher in Game 1 of Orix's second-round playoff series against the Chiba Lotte Marines.
Zaidi got to see Yamamoto at some of his highs and lows. He allowed five runs on two walks and 10 hits across seven innings pitched, but still racked up nine strikeouts. Despite missing a couple of starts with a minor injury this season, Yamamoto is expected to win his third consecutive Eiji Sawamura Award this season. He finished the regular season with a 1.21 ERA across 23 starts with 169 strikeouts and 28 walks in 164 innings pitched.
Yamamoto will be the most coveted international free agent to become available to MLB teams since Shohei Ohtani in the winter of 2017. Yamamoto is just 25 and has easily been the best pitcher outside of MLB for the past few years. Across the past seven seasons with the Buffaloes, Yamamoto has recorded a 1.82 ERA with 922 strikeouts and just 206 walks in 897 innings pitched.
Yamamoto has a fastball that primarily sits in the 92-95 mph range, although he has reached 99 mph at times. However, he has primarily dominated hitters because of elite command of his entire arsenal. Yamamoto's splitter, which works in the low 90s, is easily his best pitch and generates the most consistent swings and misses. He also has a traditional curveball and the ability to manipulate his fastball grip to utilize sink, cut, and four-seam movement.
Yamamoto has had a lighter workload than some previous NPB stars who went on to have success at the MLB level. Yu Darvish, by comparison, also came stateside after his age-24 season and had already recorded four 200-inning seasons. Yamamoto has never thrown more than 193.2 innings in a single campaign. With that said, Shohei Ohtani and Kodai Senga never threw more than 185 innings in a season.
Despite signing Masanori Murakami, the first player to be signed by an MLB team out of Japan, back in 1963, the Giants have never signed a megastar out of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). While they were a finalist for Ohtani and were "heavily involved" in talks with Senga last offseason, they have yet to sign a star from the second-best professional baseball league in the world.
While the Giants have a much clearer need to improve offensively this offseason, Yamamoto is a potentially generational talent that could give the team's next manager a rotation led by him, Logan Webb, Alex Cobb, and Kyle Harrison (Giants Top Pitching Prospect). It's easy to see how that could be enticing.
Given Yamamoto's youth and track record, he will assuredly receive a contract worth nine figures and will likely eclipse $200 million. The Giants have been seemingly hesitant to give long-term contracts out to free-agent pitchers under president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi. However, the Giants did sign Webb to a five-year, $90 million contract earlier this year, suggesting they were willing to shell out more money for a younger pitcher.
Another wrinkle to a potential pursuit of Yamamoto is a report by The Athletic's Andrew Baggarly that the SF Giants front office is looking to trade from their young pitching depth to upgrade offensively. If Farhan Zaidi liked what he saw from Yoshinobu Yamamoto, adding him could make it easier to part with other valuable pitchers in a trade.
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