NEWSLETTER
Some updates on the Yoshinobu Yamamoto pursuit for your Saturday evening, via Andy Martino at SNY.
First, a note up front that the whole “he wants to play with another Japanese star” thing was apparently a matter of mistranslation on the call with Yamamoto’s agent. It turns out Joel Wolfe was merely trying to communicate that Yamamoto has no issue with playing with another Japanese star, not that he has an explicit preference for it.
Second, Yamamoto and his agent are going to have Zoom meetings next week with interested suitors, per Martino. The 25-year-old Japanese ace figures to have a lot, lot, lot of interested suitors.
Third, again according to Martino, that process will serve as something of a first cut, because then Yamamoto will come to the United States to meet with the teams that made the cut after the Winter Meetings (December 4-7). He has until January 4 to sign, so it could presumably happen at any point during that window.
I would add that we believe Yamamoto was already in Los Angeles this past week before Thanksgiving (unless it was a perfect lookalike with premium courtside seats, he was at a Lakers game), so it would be surprising if he hadn’t ALREADY talked to some teams while he was in the States. Now, it could be that he was in L.A. for other reasons (his posting began on Monday), but it just strikes me as likely that there was a little baseball recruiting going on, despite the fact that these “first cut” Zoom calls are reportedly taking place next week.
The Cubs have been reported as among the interested suitors in Yamamoto, though that pool of teams is extremely deep. We’ll see if word leaks of them getting a Zoom meeting this coming week, and/or whether there are in-person talks/visits thereafter. The Cubs’ process may be complicated a bit by their heavy pursuit of Shohei Ohtani, as it’s POSSIBLE the Cubs would try to land both, but I kinda doubt the budgetary stomach would be there for that.
