Yoshinobu Yamamoto reportedly agrees to join Dodgers on record 12-year, $325 million

[packs]

I hear you on the gap closing lately. Paul Skenes had probably the most dominant season of college baseball ever. He was drafted first overall and signed for a 9.2 million dollar bonus. He will make the minimum after.

[D. Bergin]

Hiroki Kuroda might have only been a .500 pitcher, but he had a sneaky good (and pretty durable) 7 year run from his mid to late 30's in the MLB.

...and he wasn't a really highly touted phenom coming out of Japan. Just a solid pitcher.

Maybe not always perennial Cy Young contenders, but a lot of these Japanese pitchers are considered seasoned and reliable enough to plug right into a rotation or bullpen somewhere.

We've come a long way in scouting and evaluating these guys (both physically and mentally) since the unmitigated disaster that was Hideki Irabu. A heartbreaking story in retrospect, of a guy who never really wanted to leave his country.