‘Nasty’: Word of Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s stuff quickly spreading through Dodgers camp
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Alden Gonzalez, ESPN Staff Writer
GLENDALE, Ariz. — It took only one bullpen session for Yoshinobu Yamamoto to capture the imagination of his new team. It impressed Gavin Lux, who settled into the batter’s box to track pitches when Yamamoto first got off the mound from the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ spring training complex on Friday afternoon. It impressed fellow starting pitcher Tyler Glasnow, who stood nearby. And it impressed those who weren’t even there to watch it.
“I heard it was nasty,” one coach said. “I heard he was just dotting everywhere.”
Yamamoto obtained the largest contract ever given to a starting pitcher this offseason, a 12-year, $325 million deal that came on the heels of three consecutive MVP awards in Japan. Any concerns about transitioning from Nippon Professional Baseball to the major leagues were upstaged by the alluring traits that made Yamamoto the most coveted arm in this year’s free agent market: That he’s only 25, that he’s extremely dedicated, that his repertoire is devastating, and that his command — the way he “dots” the corners of the strike zone — is so advanced.
His new teammates have already been drawn to his distinct workout regimen, focused on flexibility and devoid of traditional weights. Some of them have also joked about learning to throw his javelin. But it’s Yamamoto’s upper-90s four-seam fastball — thrown with lots of backspin and very little downward action, providing the illusion that it is continually rising as it crosses home plate — and devastating splitter that have turned heads at Dodgers camp. That he unleashes such hellacious pitches at 5-foot-10 and 176 pounds, while delivering them with what amounts to a slide step, has only added to the fascination.
“I’ve seen people like that,” said Glasnow, who’s listed at 6-8, 225 pounds. “I just think he’s really wiry and really strong. I don’t know if size necessarily matters. I think he can just collect himself very efficiently and there’s no wasted movements in his mechanics. With a leg kick or not, I think about the way he distributes his weight and I don’t know if he necessarily needs a leg kick. He just moves so well. You can just tell he’s so athletic, so I’m not surprised at all. I think once I saw him throw I was like, ‘Duh he throws a hundred.’ He’s just so explosive.”
Only three pitchers listed at 5-10 or shorter — Whitey Ford, Steve Stone and Mike Marshall — have ever won a Cy Young Award. But Pedro Martinez, Bartolo Colon and Tim Lincecum combined for six Cy Youngs from 1997 to 2009 at 5-11. And Lincecum has been volunteered as a reasonable comp for Yamamoto by several Dodgers coaches and players largely because of the way they both generate momentum with their lower half.
“It comes out of his hand really good; he spins it great,” fellow starting pitcher Walker Buehler said of Yamamoto. “I’m just kind of curious to get my eyes on the whole picture of it.”
More than 70 photographers, videographers and fans lined up along a rope to watch Yamamoto merely play catch with Buehler on Friday. Two days later, Shohei Ohtani stood behind Yamamoto, his locker neighbor in spring training, as he navigated through his second bullpen session.
The Dodgers hope to line Yamamoto up to start at some point during their two-game opening series in South Korea on March 20 and 21, but it’s too early for their rotation plans to be solidified.
Yamamoto said he has noticed “more flexibility” through his first spring training in the United States, as opposed to the tighter schedules he experienced while training with the Orix Buffaloes in Japan. He began getting acclimated to the smaller, slicker major league baseball during the World Baseball Classic last March and trained with it this offseason. As spring training progresses, he’ll prepare himself to start slightly more often than once a week.
“I don’t have the experience throwing on shorter rest,” Yamamoto said through an interpreter. “But I did everything I could do in preparation — adjusting mechanics and a lot of different other things.”
The Dodgers won’t abide by a strict six-man rotation this season, largely because they don’t want to restrict themselves to a seven-man bullpen. But they seem determined to use the off days in their schedule and the depth in their minor league system to consistently give Yamamoto at least five days off — as opposed to the traditional four — in between starts. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said the starting rotation is “going to be fluid.”
A lot of it will hinge on how Yamamoto adapts.
“There’s life assimilation,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “There’s assimilation at the park, between starts. There’s figuring out the right rest and how to adapt more to a major league schedule that we can’t know the answer to right now. We have to be around him, watch how he’s recovering and do it in the most thoughtful way we can because obviously he’s going to be a big part of what we do in 2024 and he’s going to be a big part of what we do for a lot of years. We’re viewing this year as one to get him acclimated and figure it out. We don’t know exactly what that means yet. But we’re going to be partners with him in figuring it out.”
Yamamoto’s numbers in Japan were almost incomprehensible, the last three seasons specifically. He posted a 1.42 ERA in 557 2/3 innings from 2021 to 2023, accumulating 587 strikeouts and 110 walks. He faced 659 batters this past season and only two of them hit home runs. Dodgers vice president of player personnel Galen Carr and the team’s international scouts had spent years raving about Yamamoto to the Dodgers’ decision-makers. Friedman took two trips to Japan to see him in person in 2023.
“It’s easy to appreciate what he has accomplished,” Friedman said, “but it takes it up a whole other level when you watch the way he competes, when you see his routine and just what a freak athlete he is.”
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David Hale, ESPN Staff Writer
It’s a new era for the College Football Playoff, with the field growing from four to 12 this season. That means three times as many programs will gain entry, but, beginning with Tuesday’s initial playoff rankings, there’s three times as much room for outrage, too.
Under the old rules, there was a simple line of demarcation that separated the elated from the angry: Who’s in?
Now, there are so many more reasons for nitpicking the committee’s decisions, from first-round byes to hosting a home game to whether your supposedly meaningful conference has been eclipsed by teams from the Group of 5.
And if the first rankings are any indication, it’s going to be a fun year for fury. There’s little logic to be taken from the initial top 25 beyond the committee’s clear love for the Big Ten. Penn State and Indiana make the top eight despite having only one win combined over an ESPN FPI top-40 team (Penn State over Iowa). That Ohio State checks in at No. 2 ahead of Georgia is the most inexplicable decision involving Georgia since Charlie Daniels suggested the devil lost that fiddle contest. Oregon is a reasonable No. 1, but the Ducks still came within a breath of losing to Boise State. Indeed, the Big Ten’s nonconference record against the Power 4 this season is 6-8, just a tick better than the ACC and well behind the SEC’s mark of 10-6.
But this is the fun of early November rankings. The committee is still finding its footing, figuring out what to prioritize and what to ignore, what’s signal and what’s noise. And that’s where the outrage really helps. It’s certainly not signal, but it can be a really loud noise.
This week’s Anger Index:
There are only two possible explanations for BYU’s treatment in this initial ranking. The first is that the committee members are too sleepy to watch games beyond the Central time zone. The second, and frankly, less rational one, is they simply didn’t do much homework.
It’s certainly possible the committee members are so enthralled with metrics such as the FPI (where BYU ranks 28th) or SP+ (22nd) that they’ve determined the Cougars’ actual record isn’t as important. This is incredibly foolish. The FPI and SP+ certainly have their value, but they’re probabilistic metrics, designed to gauge the likelihood of future success. They’re in no way a ranking of actual results. (That’s why USC is still No. 17 in the FPI, despite Lincoln Riley spending his days wistfully scrolling through old pictures of Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray and wondering if Oklahoma might want to get back together.)
To look at actual results paints a clear picture.
BYU (No. 4) has a better strength of record than Ohio State (No. 5), has played roughly the same quality schedule as Texas and has two wins against other teams ranked in the committee’s top 25 — as many as Ohio State, Texas, Penn State, Tennessee and Indiana (all ranked ahead of the Cougars) combined.
Indiana’s rags-to-riches story is wonderful, of course, but how can the committee compare what BYU has done (wins over SMU and Kansas State) against Indiana’s 103rd-ranked strength of schedule?
And this particular snub has significant effects. The difference between No. 8 and No. 9 is a home game in the first round, of course, though as a potential conference champion, that’s a moot point. But what if BYU loses a game — perhaps the Big 12 title game? That could not only doom the Cougars from getting a first-round bye, but it could quite likely set up a scenario in which the Big 12 is shuffled outside the top four conferences entirely, passed by upstart Boise State.
What’s clear from this first round of rankings is the committee absolutely loves the Big Ten — with four teams ranked ahead of a subjectively more accomplished BYU team — and the Big 12 is going to face some serious headwinds.
There’s a great, though little watched, TV show from the 2010s called “Rectify,” about a man who escapes death row after new evidence is found, only to be constantly harassed by the same system that fraudulently locked him away for 20 years. This is basically the story of SMU.
Let’s do a quick blind résumé here.
Team A: 8-1 record, No. 13 strength of record, two wins vs. ranked opponents, loss to SP+ No. 22, .578 opponent win percentage
Team B: 7-1 record, No. 15 strength of record, two wins vs. ranked opponents, loss to SP+ No. 91, .567 opponent win percentage
OK, you probably guessed Team A is SMU. The Mustangs have wins against Louisville and Pitt — both relatively emphatic — and their lone loss came to No. 9 BYU, which came before a quarterback change and included five red zone drives that amounted to only six total points.
Team B? That’s Notre Dame. The Irish have the worst loss by far (to Northern Illinois) of any team in the top 25, beat a common opponent by the same score (though, while SMU outgained Louisville by 20 yards, the Cardinals actually outgained Notre Dame by 115) and have played one fewer game.
The difference? SMU has the stigma — of the death penalty, of the upstart program new to the Power 4, of being unworthy. Notre Dame is the big brand, and that results in being ranked three spots higher and, if the playoff were held today, getting in, while the Mustangs are left out.
There are three two-loss SEC teams ranked ahead of Ole Miss, which seems to be a perfectly reasonable consensus if you look at the AP poll, too. But are we sure that’s so reasonable?
Two stats we like to look at to measure a team’s quality are success rate (how often does a team make a play that improves its odds of winning) and explosiveness. Measure the differentials in each between offense and defense, then plot those out, and you’ll get a pretty clear look of who’s truly dominant in college football this season.
Explosive Play differential vs. Successful Play differential
Auburn & Ark make no sense
Iowa & Iowa St are twinsies!
Is Ole Miss undervalued? pic.twitter.com/h87SKCdOtr— 💫🅰️♈️🆔 (@ADavidHaleJoint) November 3, 2024
That outer band that features Penn State, Texas, Miami, Ohio State and Indiana (and notably, not Oregon, Alabama, LSU or Texas A&M)? That’s where Ole Miss lives.
The Rebels have two losses this season, each by three points, both in games they outgained the winning team. They lost to LSU on the road and, yes, somehow lost to a dismal Kentucky team. But hey, LSU lost to USC, too. It has been a weird season.
SP+ loves Ole Miss. The Rebels check in at No. 4 there, behind only Ohio State, Texas and Georgia.
The FPI agrees, ranking the Rebels fifth.
In ESPN’s game control metric, no team is better. Ole Miss has the third-best average in-game win percentage. That suggests a lot of strange twists, and bad luck was involved with its losses. These are things the committee should be evaluating when comparing like teams.
But how about this comparison?
Team A: 7-2, 23 points per game scoring margin vs. FBS, 1 loss to unranked, three wins vs. SP+ top 40
Team B: 7-2, 19 points per game scoring margin vs. FBS, 1 loss to unranked, three wins vs. SP+ top 40
Pretty similar, eh?
Of course, one of them is Ole Miss. That’s Team A this time around.
Team B is Alabama, ranked five spots higher.
Sure, this situation can be resolved quite easily this weekend with a win over Georgia, but Ole Miss starting at the back of the pack of SEC contenders seems like a miss by the committee, even if the math will change substantially before the next rankings are revealed.
Oh, thanks so much for the No. 25 nod, committee. All Army has done is win every game without trailing the entire season. Last season, when Liberty waltzed through its weakest-in-the-nation schedule, the committee had no objections to giving the Flames enough love to make a New Year’s Six bowl. But Army? At No. 25? Thirteen spots behind Boise State, the Knights’ competition for the Group of 5’s bid? Something tells us some spies from Air Force have infiltrated the committee’s room in some sort of Manchurian Candidate scenario.
Sure, the Seminoles are terrible now, and yes, the committee this season has plenty of new faces, but that doesn’t mean folks in Tallahassee have forgiven or forgotten what happened a year ago. Before the committee’s playoff snub, FSU had won 19 straight games and averaged 39 points. Since the snub, the Noles are 1-9 and haven’t scored 21 points in any game. Who’s to blame for this? Mike Norvell? The coaching staff? DJ Uiagalelei and the other struggling QBs? Well, sure. But it’s much easier to just blame the committee. Those folks killed Florida State’s playoff hopes and ended their run of success. The least they could do this year is rank them No. 25 just for fun.
Also angry: South Carolina (5-3, unranked), Vanderbilt (6-3, unranked), Georgia (7-1, No. 3), Louisville (6-3, No. 22), everyone who is not in the Big Ten.
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Pete Thamel, ESPN
Nebraska is adding former Houston and West Virginia head coach Dana Holgorsen to the staff as an offensive consultant, sources told ESPN.
Holgorsen will work with the offensive staff in a role that will evolve as the season goes on, per sources. Holgorsen joins the staff after spending this season with TCU as an offensive consultant.
He joins Nebraska at a time when the offense — and freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola — have been mired in a rut of uneven play and the team is on a three-game losing streak.
In Nebraska’s six conference games, the Cornhuskers rank No. 12 in the Big Ten in offense, No. 14 in rushing offense and No. 11 in passing offense. Offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield has drawn criticism during Nebraska’s recent offensive slump, which has seen a dip in the passing game of Raiola, who was ESPN’s No. 11 recruit and the top pocket passer in the 2024 recruiting class.
Raiola has the third-most interceptions among Big Ten quarterbacks with eight, trailing Michigan State‘s Aidan Chiles (11) and USC‘s Miller Moss (9), who is being benched by the Trojans in favor of Jayden Maiava for next week’s matchup with the Cornhuskers.
In the past four games, Raiola has thrown just one touchdown and six interceptions. After starting 5-1, Nebraska is 5-4 and needs a win during a tough closing stretch to clinch the program’s first bowl game since 2016. That’s the longest drought of any team in power conference football.
Nebraska has a bye this week before next week’s visit to USC.
In adding Holgorsen, they are bringing in a coach who is a noted quarterback tutor and author of prolific offenses. Over the years he has worked with a slew of top college quarterbacks as an assistant and head coach — Graham Harrell, Case Keenum, Brandon Weeden, Geno Smith, Will Grier and Clayton Tune.
Holgorsen arrived in Lincoln on Monday, per sources.
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