The Los Angeles Dodgers have come to dominate the Nippon Professional Baseball-to-MLB pipeline the past two years, grabbing the top free agent to come from Japan’s pro league in back-to-back cycles.
To a much larger point, the Dodgers have emerged as the top destination in MLB as they came out on top in the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes, in addition to many other high-profile free agents like Tanner Scott, Blake Snell, Teoscar Hernández and more.
The signings of Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki give the Dodgers three of Japan’s best and brightest on their roster, which aids their pursuit to become the go-to team for an entire country.
However, the Dodgers have faced competition every step of the way. Ohtani picked the Dodgers over the Los Angeles Angels, Toronto Blue Jays, San Francisco Giants and Chicago Cubs. The New York Yankees and New York Mets both proved to be stiff competitors for Yamamoto, and there were several contenders for Sasaki this past offseason.
The Yankees have been one of those teams consistently in the mix, but have fallen short each time due to an inability to position themselves as a better destination than the Dodgers.
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman noted the team will look to improve while acknowledging the Dodgers have established a foothold in Japan, according to Gary Phillips of New York Daily News:
“It’s a viable market,” Cashman said. “We just haven’t been able to tap into it despite our efforts as of late. So we’ll continue to do that and reevaluate. It’s not about scouting it. We’re scouting it properly. It’s about trying to find a way to make us the best destination spot for them compared to others. The Dodgers have done a great job of somehow securing those players and making that a destination spot. They obviously had a great recruiter in Shohei Ohtani. That creates a homefield advantage probably because of his relationships over there. They’ve done a very great job cultivating the Japanese market.”
Cashman added having Ohtani on the roster in addition to the Dodgers’ well-established commitment to creating a winning environment is a combination that teams like the Yankees have found difficult to contend with over the past two years:
“We’ve been in [on these players],” he said. “We’ve gotten our meetings. We’ve been invited to participate, which is an honor because not everybody’s even getting that. But we’re falling short at the same time, and we’ll continue to reevaluate why that’s the case.”
In the meantime, the Dodgers get to enjoy the fruits of their labor with Yamamoto and Sasaki contributing to the league’s most talented rotation, while Ohtani adds his fair share on the mound and in the batter’s box.
Dodgers monopoly on Japanese players
This is not the first time that Yankees general manager Brian Cashman discussed the difficulty of competing against the Dodgers for international free agents. He previously admitted that L.A. has “cornered the market” on Japanese players as of late.
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