This entire division is afraid of losing in the WS, so they just dont try to get there.

It's all, every bit of it, funny.

The Cubs are the 4th largest market in the sport and their record contract is Jason Heyward.

The Cardinals have been selling nostalgia over wins for a decade.

The Brewers have a good team and decide to sell players at the deadline like Josh Hader and throw their ace pitcher under the bus in preseason.

It's impossible to not fucking laugh at the NLC. The whole division is perfect for each other. If just 1 team would actively try to be great then the rest of the teams would be pressured into trying, but none of them want to be great. It's a Benny Hill marathon.
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Jordan Lyles for Tyler O'Neil. Let's get it done Mo
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No shit. No Cardinals fans ever comes in here and say anything positive. We trash the management of this team 24/7.
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Nearly Half The League Has Reached Out To Yoshinobu Yamamoto https://t.co/TbdAlf6FHl pic.twitter.com/zKNjYfDA5x

— MLB Trade Rumors (@mlbtraderumors) November 22, 2023

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via GIPHY

Talking about a FA pitcher at 25 years old that gets better grades than Tanaka when he came over. He's a potential TOR, prime age, and you are going to get him for 100-150 million dollars less than market because he hasnt thrown a pitch in MLB. All 30 teams should be in on that.
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I don't know if him not pitching in the majors is a big deal when Kodai Senga was lights out and had a Cy Young contender season as a rookie. The evaluators say he's better than Senga.

The posting fee impacts his value more than anything. But everyone thinks he's going to take home $200 million not including the posting fee.

What's remarkable is you never see an ace in MLB hit the open market at age 25.
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But we have Nootbar doing the personal work on recruiting.:-)
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Lets assume that he gets $250M, the posting fee, assuming I have this correct, will be $30M. If he was a true ace in MLB at 25 years old he would be getting WAY more than $280M.

The biggest impact on his value is far and away the fact that he hasnt pitched in MLB. The season is longer, the breaks between starts is shorter, and the competition is better. NPB is about equivalent to AAA. If you want to look at Senga, then take a look. He didn't even have a posting fee and he signed for 5/75. He just pitched better than Aaron Nola at basically the same age and Nola got 7/172. But, just because Senga had success at MLB pace, doesn't mean Yamamoto will. The same way prospects on equal level dont have the same success, or a lower tier prospect like Nootbaar runs fucking circles around Walker in every aspect of the game.
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$280 million would still be the second-highest total value contract for a pitcher in the history of baseball with only Gerrit Cole getting more ($324 million). Stephen Strasburg is currently second at $245 million, so it would dwarf him.

Japanese pitchers have a great track record of working out; Japanese hitters is another issue. I think you're overemphasizing the Japan aspect. There's other factors involved here too, like workload. Yamamoto threw 138 pitches in his last start. He's also like 5-foot-10, while Cole is the prototype size for a horse's ace.
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Like Daisuke Matsuzaka, Kei Igawa, Hideki Irabu, and countless others that have tried. If you want to make believe that a pitcher in a AAA league doesnt have any major effect on his first MLB contract, then you do you.

Gerrit Cole signed his contract at 4 years older and it still has a decent chance (practically a slam dunk to happen) of seeing another full years salary tacked on to the deal, now add another 4.
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Daisuke, Igawa and Irabu is the list. They're aren't countless others. The track record has been impressive since Hideo Nomo's debut in 1995.

Daisuke proved he could pitch in the majors. He had a 160 ERA+ and was fourth in the AL Cy Young race in 2008. Pitchers wear and tear so he's considered a bust, but it had nothing to do with coming over from Japan. Pitchers in general carry a higher risk of decline than position players, but I don't have to tell you that.

Igawa was the only total bust. Even Irabu was league average for two years as a starter and that was 25 years ago.

I think the jump of coming over from Japan has a slight impact on salaries, but the shrewd front offices know that investing in Japanese pitchers is a sound expenditure generally and the track record proves that. Stuff and command plays, and Japanese pitchers generally have it.
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"Slight impact."

You really want to die on the hill of a pitcher with a sub 2 ERA at 25 years old is only getting slightly impacted in his contract when the projection is around $200M is absolutely fucking hilarious. If he was putting up those numbers in MLB at his age he'd be looking at $400M+.

And that's not the entire list. Look up Michael Nakamura. Even a guy like Kenta Maeda, while mildly successful in MLB, has seen his ERA jump to nearly 4 in his MLB career versus 2.3 in NPB because he gives up double the HRs. Yusei Kikuchi. Kyuji Fujikawa. Shintaro Fujinami. I could keep going but there's no point. Yamamoto is a literal fucking prospect who just happened to go through the "minor league" process in a foreign professional league that allows him to be a FA and teams aren't awarded the opportunity to pay him league minimum for 3 years with 3 years of arbitration. They have to stick their head out a little bit to get him, but its far from having to pay full market value, because it's unknown how good he'll actually be in MLB.
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Yamamoto is still getting the winter's second-largest contract outside of a unicorn (Shohei Ohtani) going up against established MLB'ers and the second-largest total value contract for a pitcher in history. That's remarkable. And he's 5-foot-10.

But now you're moving the goal posts with these new names. We're talking about top level, established Japanese pitchers.

Michael Nakamura? He was signed as an amateur. WTF does he have to do with this conversation? He's no different from Brady Aiken.

Kenta Meada has had a great run. Third in the ROY voting in 2016 and then was top 3 in the Cy Young voting in 2020. He has a career 3.83 K/BB ratio! That's impressive. What's your standard? Hall of Famer?

Shintaro Fujinami wasn't even a high profile signing nor had high expectations that came with his signing. He made $3.25 million last year. You're lowering the bar again by bringing him up. Same with Kyuji Fujikawa. He never made more than $4.5 million in a season. Never expected to be anything but rotation depth.

I will give you Yusei, but he did have shoulder problems and diminished stuff before he came over here and he signed a creative deal where he got $43 million for three years with options instead of the $100 million some thought he would get.
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No goalpost is being moved, you are just too ignorant to admit the obvious in the fact that because he is coming from NPB he is going to sign for much lower than he is projected to be worth on the field. That is the reason why teams are "savvy" when it comes to NPB players, because it's not near as bad when it goes wrong, and they look like fucking geniuses when it goes right.

You're too busy looking at what the pitchers made in money versus their performance in NPB and MLB. Every single name I have mentioned was a highly successful pitcher in NPB. There's no team out there scouting the NPB's version of Steven Matz to come play in MLB.

But I'm done with this conversation. You go ahead and hang your hat on a posting fee and his height as the main limiting factors.
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Shintaro Fujinami wasn't highly successful. He walked a career 4.2 batters per nine, had a 2.2 career K/BB ratio and a career 1.35 WHIP in Japan. He is the quintessential definition of Steven Matz coming to the US.
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