The Yamamoto dream hath died

It was never a particularly realistic dream, truth be told, and now the Dodgers have put an end to it

Image: DALL-E

It’s been a few weeks since I had any real faith that the Cardinals would sign Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Once the market for the 25-year-old ace posted out of Japan hit a roiling boil that took estimations past $200 million and into the $300 million range, I knew the Cards’ efforts, to whatever extent they undertook those efforts, would come to grief. And so they have, as Yamamoto late Thursday night agreed to a 12-year, $325 million pact with the Dodgers, who have now committed more than $1 billion in guaranteed salary this offseason – all toward improving an already juggernaut roster. 

For reasons sufficient unto my inner self, I was still playing a perilous game leading up to Yamamoto’s decision. By that I mean I was workshopping headlines for this newsletter in the event that the Cardinals – perhaps fueled by the Nootbaar family’s recruiting efforts – stupefied every observer by landing Yamamoto. Something simple and declarative like, “They did it” was a consideration, as was the more cryptic “!!!”. “Everything has now changed,” earned a thought. So did the mostly rhetorical interrogative, “Is this the most important signing in Cardinals history?”  

None of that, however, is now necessary, and we’re left with not a frontline starting pitcher with likely more than a decade of excellence ahead of him, but rather with an object lesson in the idea that a thing can be both thoroughly unsurprising and ultimately disappointing. I put the loss of this pitcher that we never possessed in the first place into such a bucket. In addition to adding elite run prevention and swing-and-miss to the front of the rotation for years to come, Yamamoto’s signing would’ve more than satisfied the Cardinals’ wishes to be a more competitive presence in Asia (and, oh, probably netted them a few Japan-based subscriptions to whatever streaming apparatus is in the offing). They’ve built out scouting staff and forged a working relationship with Yamamoto’s now former team, the Orix Buffaloes, all in the service of being a player for talent in that part of the world. Landing Yamamoto would not have been so much a foothold in Asia as it would’ve been a kicking of the door from its hinges. So, yes, disappointment. Outrage, though, is different from disappointment, and it says here this is no occasion for righteous opprobrium leveled at the front office.