Former Major League Baseball outfielder Josh Reddick, 36, has backfired after criticizing the Los Angeles Dodgers’ signing of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, 25.
“How can you give $325 million to a guy who hasn’t thrown a single ball in the majors?” Reddick asked on social media on April 24. “Baseball is ruined,” he wrote in response.
It was a jab at Yamamoto. Yamamoto signed a 12-year, $325 million contract with the Dodgers on April 22. It was the longest contract in major league baseball history for a pitcher, surpassing Wayne Garland’s 10-year, $2.3 million deal with the Cleveland Indians (now the Cardinals) in November 1976 and surpassing Gerrit Cole’s $324 million, nine-year deal with the New York Yankees in December 2019.
Yamamoto has no major league experience. After being selected by the Orix Buffaloes with the fourth overall pick in the 2016 draft, he made his first-team debut in 2017 and played exclusively in Nippon Professional Baseball for seven years until this year. While he has dominated as one of the top pitchers in Nippon Professional Baseball, winning four pitching titles (Wins, ERA, Strikeouts, and Wins), the Sawamura Award, and MVP in the last three years, he is unproven in the majors.
However, his fastball topped out at 159 mph, his high-speed forkball in the low 140s, his flawless command, and his stamina to throw long pitches made him a complete pitcher. Most importantly, he was given the best deal in baseball before he even made his debut, signing a 12-year, super-long contract at the tender age of 25 in 1998.
Big-market teams including the Dodgers, New York Yankees, New York Mets, San Francisco Giants, Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays, and Philadelphia Phillies jumped on the Yamamoto bandwagon, pushing the price tag past the $200 million mark. It’s a contract that caught everyone by surprise, and it’s understandable that major league players would resist.
Anyone can criticize, but the fact that he’s Reddick has created a backlash. “How can you cheat and still call yourself a world champion?” fans asked, criticizing Reddick for using his World Series victory in his social media bio. “Shut up cheater,” was one of the more colorful responses.
Reddick was a member of the Houston Astros’ 2017 World Series championship team. Reddick was the starting right fielder that year, batting .301 (150-for-477) with 13 home runs, 82 RBIs, and an OPS of .847 in 134 games. However, the championship was won by illegally stealing autographs. Throughout the season, Houston players would steal opponents’ autographs from cameras in the outfield during home games and then knock on trash cans next to the dugout to give them to batters at the plate.
The Astros won their first championship that year, defeating the Dodgers in seven games in the World Series, but the legitimacy of their victory was tarnished when the full extent of the autograph theft was revealed. Several players, including Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman, apologized, but they were insincere, and Houston became public enemies. Reddick was one of the unrepentant players, brazenly stating,헤라카지노 “If we win, the criticism will go away.”
Redick’s performance plummeted after the autograph stealing scandal became public knowledge. He left Houston at the end of 2020, and his major league career ended in 2021 with the Arizona Diamondbacks. Last winter, he played his final season with the Perth Heat of the Australian Football League after announcing his retirement.
Reddick, a right-handed hitting outfielder who debuted with the Boston Red Sox in 2009, made the leap to the major leagues with the Oakland Athletics after being acquired in a trade in 2012. The 2012 American League (AL) Gold Glove winner in the outfield, Reddick’s career numbers in 13 seasons in the majors are 1,305 games (4408 hits, 1157 at-bats), 146 home runs, 575 RBIs, and a .747 OPS. He played half a season with the Dodgers in an August 2016 trade, but fell short of expectations with 47 games (155 hits, 40 at-bats), two home runs, nine RBIs, and a .643 OPS. The very next year, he signed a four-year, $52 million free agent contract to go to Houston and beat the Dodgers. His history with the Dodgers has been a bitter one, and fans have been quick to criticize the Yamamoto signing.