The Phillies put their best foot forward to try and sign Yoshinobu Yamamoto over the winter and owner John Middleton has no regrets about it.
Had they been successful, Yamamoto would have been the first player from Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball to sign in Philadelphia.
The Phillies offered more money than any other team that had been trying to sign the Japanese ace, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, and Middleton told the outlet that Philadelphia “pushed hard with Yamamoto.”
Yamamoto eventually signed a 12-year, $325 million contract with the Dodgers in late December and the Phillies were never seen as a serious contender for the prized pitcher.
“If I had to do it all over again, I’d still do what we did because I think you have to be able to look yourself in the mirror and say, ‘You know what? I tried,’” Middleton told The Inquirer. “It’s kind of easy in that situation to say, ‘We’ll just stay home and not even make an effort, or we’ll make a token effort because we’re probably going to wind up losing him.’ I’m not built that way. If he’s really good, you make the effort because you never know when you’ll change somebody’s mind.”
The Phillies owner reiterated that point later in the conversation and mentioned Jordan Hicks and Robert Stephenson, who Philadelphia also missed out on signing.
“We were going to sign Yamamoto for a lot, a lot of money, and we never thought twice about it in terms of a budget impact. We thought about it in terms of a competitive impact,” Middleton said. “Same thing with Hicks and Stephenson. We thought they were just really good players that were going to help move the needle.”
Philadelphia is coming off a season in which it was bounced in the NLCS by the Diamondbacks.