Right-hander has been officially free to negotiate with MLB clubs since last Tuesday, when the Orix Buffaloes posted the star pitcher. The free agent courtship proce s looks to begin in earnest next week, as reported on how Yamamoto and his representatives at Wa serman will approach the decision of picking the rightys new team. The first stage is a round of phone calls and Zoom meetings with all of the interested teams. Yamamoto is then expected to arrive in the United States for a series of in-person meetings and further negotiations with however many finalists make this second and presumably last stage of talks. The timeline for these in-person sitdowns is after baseballs Winter Meetings (December 4-7), which will allow teams a better sense of the pitching market if some other top hurlers are signed or traded in the interim, and allows Yamamotos camp that same knowledge as well as perhaps extra negotiating leverage, if remaining suitors are even more Mike Conley Jersey desperate for pitching. Though Yamamotos posting window extends until January 4, it is not expected to require that much time for the right-hander to decide on a contract, Martino writes. Obviously theres a lot of fluidity in this timeline depending on how many teams makes Yamamotos in-person shortlist and what types of offers end up on the table, but it would tentatively seem like he might have his decision made sometime between mid-December and Christmas Day. Landing Yamamoto would undoubtedly make for a merry holiday season for any team or fanbase, given all of the hype that has surrounded the 25-year-olds impending arrival in Major League Baseball. With a 1.82 ERA and a long list of accolades ama sed over his seven seasons with the Buffaloes, Yamamoto is one of the most intriguing players to ever make the jump from NPB to MLB, as well as something of a unique free agent in general due to his young age. It is widely anticipated that Yamamoto will earn at least $200MM in his contract ( a nine-year, $225MM deal), and agent Joel Wolfe said earlier this week that 11-14 teams had already been in touch within the first day of Yamamotos posting. Martino also adds a clarification to a statement made by Wolfe earlier in the week, as the agent told Japanese media during a conference call that his client would have no problem playing with another Japanese player. Due to a translation error, this was incorrectly interpreted as Wolfe saying that Yamamoto was prioritizing teams that already had at least one Japanese player on the roster, which isnt the case. Bojan Bogdanovic Jersey