From the perspectives of people from multiple teams who met with him during the recruiting process, Yoshinobu Yamamoto cared about winning. People involved in the stakes knew money would play a role because it usually does, but at 25 years old, Yamamoto was always going to get paid substantially, regardless of which team he picked. So a common belief was that Yamamoto spoke sincerely when he talked about wanting to go where he could win and where he would be allowed to train similarly to how he did in Japan.
The New York Mets badly wanted Yamamoto. They wanted him so much that they placed him alone at the tippy top of their wishlist. They wanted him so much that owner Steve Cohen and president of baseball operations David Stearns hopped on a plane to Japan a few weeks ago to meet with him. They wanted him so much that Cohen and his wife, Alex, hosted him for a dinner in Connecticut. And they wanted him so much that Cohen offered him the largest sum of money ever for a pitcher.
By all accounts, the Mets went to great lengths to try to sign Yamamoto. It didn’t work. The Mets presented Yamamoto with an offer of $325 million over 12 years, which the Los Angeles Dodgers matched, a league source told The Athletic. Yamamoto accepted the offer from Los Angeles, where he will join…
