With a pricy contract comes heavy expectations. That’s true in MLB and in every aspect of life. The Los Angeles Dodgers just gave pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto a 12-year, $325 million contract, the largest ever to a pitcher not...
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With a pricy contract comes heavy expectations.
That’s true in MLB and in every aspect of life.
The Los Angeles Dodgers just gave pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto a 12-year, $325 million contract, the largest ever to a pitcher not named Shohei Ohtani.
A team like the Dodgers is usually associated with high expectations, regardless of the contract and collectively speaking.
You can imagine that fans now hold Yamamoto to a high standard and expect nothing but greatness from him.
After all, he has been the MVP of the Pacific League in Japan for three straight seasons and has a 1.82 career ERA in the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB).
Analyst Chris Rose thinks that, in order to meet expectations, Yamamoto’s contributions have to go way beyond the regular season.
In other words, fans want postseason excellence from him.
“Yamamoto HAS to win some big postseason games in order to live up to his contract,” he tweeted with a clip analyzing the situation.
Yamamoto HAS to win some big postseason games in order to live up to his contract pic.twitter.com/KIV9aAgKK6
— Chris Rose Sports (@ChrisRoseSports) December 29, 2023
He illustrated his point while talking about Barry Zito’s 2012 National League Championship Series heroics.
In Game 5, with the St. Louis Cardinals up 3-1 in the series, Zito pitched shutout ball into the eighth inning to secure a 5-0 win and a return to San Francisco, where the Giants took the remaining two games to advance to the World Series.
What Rose is saying is that it won’t matter that much if Yamamoto has a bad game here or there in the regular season: if he can pitch like an ace in postseason play, he will win over fans and he can justify his high price tag.
The post Analyst Declares What Yoshinobu Yamamoto Must Do With Dodgers appeared first on The Cold Wire.