Yoshinobu Yamamoto: seventh best pitcher in MLB (despite his postseason performance)

Charles-Alexis Brisebois
Yoshinobu Yamamoto: seventh best pitcher in MLB (despite his postseason performance)
Credit: X

Ranking baseball players will never be unanimous. Never.

For example, on Wednesday night, MLB Network ranked the top 10 starting pitchers in Manfred's league. It's worth noting that Paul Skenes is behind Tarik Skubal… even though he was ahead of him when MLB Network ranked its top 100 players overall. Go figure.

And behind them?

The biggest talking point right now is the fact that Yoshinobu Yamamoto is ranked seventh. Many people say that there are no six better pitchers than him in baseball.

It's important to remember that in his second season in the MLB, Yamamoto was a Cy Young finalist. He had a great season before being able to break everything in the playoffs.

His performances in the World Series were particularly memorable.

Zack Wheeler (who has been dominant for years but was unable to finish the year due to health issues) is on the podium. I think he deserves to be there.

Do Chris Sale, Cristopher Sanchez, and Garrett Crochet deserve to be ahead of Yamamoto? I think Sanchez and Crochet, in 2026, may be ahead of him, yes. But you could also convince me otherwise.

I feel that putting Yamamoto so “low” in the rankings was not easy, but that the longevity of some of his opponents worked against the Dodgers pitcher, who is just arriving in MLB.

But if we turn the question around and ask which pitcher would be best equipped to take the mound in a big game, it's true that this could raise the value of the Dodgers' Japanese pitcher. So it depends on your point of view.

This content was created with the help of AI.

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