With the exception of Shohei Ohtani, no player is set to make a bigger splash in MLB’s offseason free agent market than Orix Buffaloes ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who is just the tip of the iceberg in an offseason when four pittchers from Japan are testing an MLB market that is likely to produce some record contracts.
Although Yamamoto is being posted and will have just a 45-day window to sign and a posting fee will need to be paid to Orix, MLB scouts and executives seem certain he will shatter the record for the biggest contract offered to a first-year MLB player.
As expected, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who I didn’t rate as one of the top five players in the Pacific League this year, won without any help from me, one of two voters who didn’t give him a single vote of any color for him.
The big surprise in Tuesday’s complicated Awards Night was that Shoki Murakami, collected not on the CL Rookie of the Year Award in a season during which he was never once referred to as a rookie “shinjinsenshu” by the Japanese media which only refers to first-year pros as rookie, but that the league ERA leader was also was selected MVP.
