On Thursday night, the Los Angeles Dodgers added their third superstar of this offseason, taking one step closer to an all but guaranteed World Series championship next year and pushing their spending beyond an unprecedented $1 billion. Yoshinobu Yamamoto is the newest Dodger, coming in off the heels of Tyler Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani, and joining established LA stars Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman.
The races for Yamamoto and Ohtani were tight and without a clear favorite right up until the end. At least two other teams were still finalists when Yamamoto made his decision — the Yankees and Mets — while the Phillies, Red Sox and Blue Jays lingered in the background. The Giants were also bidding, but they were basically told that no amount of money would bring Yamamoto to San Francisco. Sorry, guys!
Baseball Twitter has been filled with the sounds of wailing from fans of all of the aforementioned teams that have now lost out on three top talents, all to the Dodgers. Here's a roundup of some of the best reactions.
Baseball fans crying about Dodgers after Yamamoto, Ohtani, Glasnow deals is glorious
Yoshinobu Yamamoto
The chances that Yamamoto would go to the Red Sox always seemed slim, but now that the deal is done, Boston fans have taken to doomsaying and forgetting that they've won four World Series in the past two decades. Yankees fans have a bit more to complain about with all of the details Aaron Boone was spilling at the final hours of Yamamoto's free agency. The Yankees game him a No. 18 jersey! They got Hideki Matsui on video! Yankees fans had good reason to be optimistic that Yamamoto would end up in the Bronx. But alas!
And the Mets? The Dodgers matched their offer and Yamamoto didn't waste a second signing that one.
Shohei Ohtani
The Dec. 8 debacle surrounding Shohei Ohtani/Robert Herjavec's plane to Toronto has already gone down in infamy as a day when everyone in baseball lost their damn minds. We were tracking planes, Yusei Kikuchi's 50-person dinner reservation for sushi, and fake videos of Ohtani arriving in Toronto, all while Ohtani was safely and happily at home in Southern California, where he'd announce his signing with the Dodgers the next day, making complete fools of all of the journalists who were staking their careers on him being on that plane.
And then there are the poor, poor Giants, spurned for the millionth time, with Ohtani rubbing salt in the wound by choosing LA over SF despite being offered identical deals from both teams. Chin up, Giants. At least you've got Jung Hoo Lee.
Tyler Glasnow
As a trade piece with total say in the matter and at least two other fanbases to infuriate, the Glasnow extension has been the least complained-about of these three Dodgers acquisitions. Sometimes it's easy to forget that the Rays have fans, especially when their Wild Card games this year were among the least watched postseason games in a literal century. It does seem, though, that there are people in Tampa Bay who will mourn Glasnow's departure. Who would've thought?
If this didn't sum up enough of the social media outcry, then a few simple searches on Twitter could go a long way in painting a much more depressing picture for the rest of the state of MLB fandoms.