New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole is recovering from his Tommy John surgery, but recently found himself blamed for the team’s output in closing Los Angeles Dodgers ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who is coming off pitching two complete games in the postseason.
MLB insider Jon Heyman dropped a bombshell Sunday night, reporting what bothered the Yankees from signing Yamamoto, who inked a 12-year, $325 million deal with the Dodgers in free agency before the 2024 season.
The Yankees were there for Yamamoto till $300 million, but they didn’t match the Dodgers’ winning bid because of the following reasons (via Heyman):
1) They thought $300M was the right offer
2) They didn’t believe anyone should have a bigger deal than Gerrit Cole.
3) NYY offered opt-out after 5 yrs, but not a $50M signing bonus.
Yankees decided not to match Dodgers winning $325M bid to Yamamoto because: 1) they thought $300M was right offer, 2) they didn’t believe anyone should have a bigger deal than Gerrit Cole. NYY offered optout after 5 yrs but not a $50M signing bonus. Highly unlikely it mattered.
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) December 23, 2023
Gerrit Cole signed a nine-year, $324 million deal in December 2019. The Yankees wanted to maintain his status quo within the team, and as a result, they might have missed out on a much younger (27 YO) Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who could have delivered the result they have been waiting for since 2009.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto proving Yankees’ front office wrong
Yoshinobu Yamamoto is delivering performance for the ages. In World Series Game 2, he threw 105 pitches for the whole nine innings, while only giving up one run and striking out eight hitters. He allowed four hits and zero walks.
In the NLCS game against the Milwaukee Brewers, he threw an almost identical complete game, as he became the only pitcher since Curt Schilling (2001) to have thrown back-to-back complete games in the postseason.
Had the Yankees gone harder for Yamamoto, they might have had him instead of the Dodgers. Having him in front of the rotation with Cole could have made them invisible in October.
However, now they have no other option but to see how much not going for Yamamoto could hurt them.
More MLB News:
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Dodgers’ $72M veteran reliever expected to miss World Series roster as Roki Sasaki surges
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