Yoshinobu Yamamoto's Dodgers success could be elephant in the room with Tatsuya Imai

Japanese free agent Tatsuya Imai's market has been strangely quiet. He's been meeting with teams in LA and has been connected to the Cubs, Phillies, Mets, and Yankees, among others, but he admitted over the weekend that there aren't any concrete possibilities yet. His posting window closes on Jan. 2, and teams usually prefer to get a deal done a few days before to leave time to complete a physical.

Imai has far fewer accolades than the last two major pitchers to come over from NPB — the Dodgers' own Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki — but he's still has an impressive resumé. In 2025, he pitched 163 2/3 innings for a 1.92 ERA.

Could Yamamoto be one of the reasons why Imai's market has stalled? His NPB career was so decorated, and even after a shaky and injury-shortened rookie season, he proved he's worth all of the money the Dodgers are giving him this year. Might teams be hesitant to give Imai a long(ish)-term deal if he already doesn't look like he'll be able to match Yamamoto's success?

Yoshinobu Yamamoto's dominance could be getting in the way of Tatsuya Imai's market

It wouldn't be fair to compare every Japanese pitcher to Yamamoto, but it's kind of inevitable. There were successful Japanese pitchers before Yamamoto (Hideo Nomo, Masahiro Tanaka, arguably Kenta Maeda) and currently successful Japanese pitchers who are not Yamamoto (Shota Imanaga, Yu Darvish, Yusei Kikuchi), but none have reached the heights Yamamoto did in 2025 and none of the active players' success looks as sustainable.

Imai isn't in line for the same kind of money as Yamamoto's record-setting 12 years and $325 million, at least. Munetaka Murakami was an interesting case, coming off of an injured year and a lot more question marks about how he'll perform in MLB, but any deal Imai signs will probably look relatively similar: short-term but with a respectable AAV.

There's a lot working against Imai. Comparisons to Yamamoto (maybe that's another reason why he doesn't want to sign with the Dodgers), the difficult learning curve from NPB to MLB that only Imanaga really managed to work through gracefully (before regressing quickly), and so on.

It still seems likely that he'll secure a prove-it deal somewhere before his window closes, but Yamamoto's presence is going to loom large over his rookie season, wherever he ends up.