The only knock on Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the most highly regarded pitcher on the free-agent market besides Shohei Ohtani, is that he’s short and light at 5-foot-10 and 175 pounds.
His reputation, however, is huge and his trophy case crammed with heavy metal after winning his third consecutive MVP award Tuesday on top of his third consecutive Eiji Sawamura Award — the Japanese equivalent of the Cy Young — in the Nippon Professional Baseball Pacific League.
And let’s not forget that Ichiro Suzuki, the greatest Japanese import to MLB before Ohtani, is roughly the same size as Yamamoto, although he was a great hitter, not a pitcher (although that changed a week ago; more on that later).