Baseball's spending class has pulled out all the stops this season in an attempt to woo star Japanese pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
Why shouldn't they? Yamamoto is 70-29 with an astounding 1.82 ERA and 922 strikeouts in seven Nippon Professional Baseball seasons. Behind Dodgers designated hitter and pitcher (and fellow 2023 World Baseball Classic champion) Shohei Ohtani, no free agent is more widely coveted.
On Thursday, Yankees manager Aaron Boone detailed how New York went about recruiting the 25-year-old. He revealed that he personally presented Yamamoto with a No. 18 Yankees jersey–his number in both NPB and the WBC.
“I gave him that jersey,” Boone told reporters at a charity event. “It’s his if he wants to keep it.”
The Yankees had kept the No. 18 jersey open for the past season in anticipation of their potential courtship of Yamamoto. In Japan, the jersey designates a pitcher’s status as the team’s ace.
New York's pitch also involved former left fielder and designated hitter Hideki Matsui, the 2009 World Series MVP, who narrated a video for Yamamoto. Boone emphasized that the Yankees were impressed by the pitcher's character.
“It’s been fun to get to meet [Yamamoto] a couple of times and be around him and have conversations and interact,” Boone said. “Now we’ll see how it goes. I know all the teams are now putting their best foot forward and negotiating. That’s above my pay grade. We’ll see where it lands.”
