Rosenthal: How Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s free agency compares to past Japanese

Recency bias creates the impression that the pursuit of Yoshinobu Yamamoto is the most intense recruitment of a Japanese pitcher we’ve seen. The large number of big-market teams engaged with Yamamoto certainly qualifies his free agency as unusual. But the fervor surrounding the right-hander is not all that different from the excitement generated by Daisuke Matsuzaka during the 2006-07 offseason, Yu Darvish during 2011-12 and Masahiro Tanaka during 2013-14. And for that matter, Shohei Ohtani during 2017-18.

Ohtani, obviously, is in a separate category, and not simply because he is a two-way player. He was 23 when he signed, and his age restricted his bonus under international amateur signing rules to $2.3 million. The better comparisons for Yamamoto are Matsuzaka, Darvish and Tanaka, who faced no salary limits.

Like Yamamoto, Darvish and Tanaka were entering their age 25 seasons. Matsuzaka was a bit older, entering his age 26 campaign. Looking back, as the bidding for Yamamoto intensifies, their major-league experiences could be viewed as at least somewhat instructive.

As The Athletic’s Jayson Stark and Eno Sarris explained in separate articles, the objective information available on Yamamoto, from pitch-grade evaluation to biomechanical analysis, is much more extensive than it was for any of his predecessors. Still, nothing is guaranteed.

Matsuzaka, who joined the Boston Red Sox on a six-year, $52 million contract after the team won his rights with a $51.11 million posting fee, made a combined 61 starts in his first two seasons with Boston, 55 in his final four. His injuries included a torn elbow ligament that required Tommy John surgery. His adjusted ERA with the Red Sox was barely above league average, and after his contract expired he spent two unremarkable seasons with the New York Mets.

Darvish, who joined the Texas Rangers on a six-year, $56 million deal in addition to a $51.7 million posting fee, is perhaps the most successful of all Japanese pitchers, a two-time Cy Young Award runner-up and five-time All-Star entering his 12th major-league season. He also has had elbow issues, requiring Tommy John surgery in 2015, arthroscopic elbow surgery in 2018 and a shutdown stemming from a stress reaction at the end of 2023. But his career adjusted ERA is 17 percent above league average. Zack Greinke, a strong Hall of Fame candidate, is 21 percent above.

Tanaka, who joined the New York Yankees on a seven-year, $155 million free-agent deal, also enjoyed a successful major-league run, even after getting diagnosed with a partially torn elbow ligament in his first season. Avoiding surgery, he averaged 27 starts in his six full seasons before the shortened 2020 campaign. According to FanGraphs’ dollars metric, which is WAR converted to a dollar scale based on what a player would earn in free agency, Tanaka slightly outperformed his contract with his regular-season performance. He also was a stalwart in the postseason, producing a 3.33…