When the Los Angeles Dodgers signed Yoshinobu Yamamoto prior to the 2024 season, they made him the highest-paid pitcher in MLB history, despite the right-hander never throwing a pitch at the Major League level.
After a highly decorated career in Nippon Professional Baseball, Yamamoto made the jump to MLB and found success in his rookie season, pitching to a 3.00 ERA in 90 innings while leading the rotation to a World Series title.
Now in year two, Yamamoto has taken another step forward, showing why the Dodgers signed him to a historic contract and making a case for himself as the best pitcher in baseball.
Yamamoto is now a favorite to win the Cy Young Award as the calendar turns to May, and that has become a focus of his. No Japanese pitcher has won the honor, so Yamamoto wants to become the first, he said via Dylan Hernández of the L.A. Times:
“I’ve heard no Japanese pitcher has won it yet, so I’m awfully interested in it,” Yamamoto said in Japanese. “I think that concentrating on each and every game and performing at my best is what will lead to a wonderful award like that, so I’d like to do my best every day.”
Yamamoto has thrown 40 innings this season across seven starts with a microscopic 0.90 ERA, 2.25 FIP, 11.03 strikeouts per nine, 2.93 walks per nine and 1.4 WAR.
He leads MLB in ERA as the only qualified pitcher with a mark below 1.00. His FIP also ranks fifth in the league and his K/9 ranks seventh.
Yamamoto does face competition for the award, namely from Paul Skenes of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who is widely considered the favorite. Skenes has pitched to a 2.74 ERA across 42.2 innings with a 3.00 FIP, 8.65 K/9 and 1.6 9BB/9.
Among other pitchers off to hot starts who could push for the award include the San Diego Padres’ Nick Pivetta and Michael King, the Philadelphia Phillies Jesus Luzardo, Logan Webb of the San Francisco Giants, Freddy Peralta of the Milwaukee Brewers and the Cincinnati Reds’ Hunter Greene.
Yamamoto is off to the best start of any pitcher in MLB and as long as he doesn’t have any games that go completely sideways, he could be tough to overtake for the award.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto won NL Pitcher of the Month
Yamamoto was named the National League Pitcher of the Month for March/April. He became the first Dodgers pitcher to win the award since Clayton Kershaw in April 2023 and the first Dodgers’ right-hander to win the award since Walker Buehler in July 2021.
Yamamoto is just the fourth Japanese-born pitcher to win the award and it marks the sixth time a Japanese-born pitcher has won the honor. He’s joined by Yu Darvish (July/August 2020 & September/October 2022), Hideo Nomo (June 1995 and September 1996) and Masahiro Tanaka (May 2014).
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