Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s early season success is simultaneously puzzling and expected

When Yoshinobu Yamamoto signed the longest and largest contract for a pitcher in MLB history — 12 years, $325 million — in late 2023, some were skeptical he’d be worth it. While he’s just 130 innings into his career (not counting the postseason), he’s now showing exactly why the Dodgers awarded him such a contract.

A quick glance at his Statcast profile shows a lot redder red than 2024.

What’s funny is he’s allowing a little harder contact (both exit velocity and HardHit%), walking a few more hitters and his chase rate is down slightly. So, why has he been so good this season thus far? Let’s take a deeper dive into the numbers.

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4-Seam Fastball

Yamamoto’s 4-seamer has never been his calling card. Yes, he throws it hard (averaging 95.5 MPH in both seasons) and locates it well, but it’s pretty well known his splitter is his money pitch. Still, he has to throw it and be effective with it to be a successful pitcher. In his first two seasons, he has done just that. On the surface, it looks like his heater has been better in 2025.

Year	BA	xBA	SLG	xSLG	wOBA	xwOBA	EV	HH%	Whiff%
2024	.266	.278	.419	.446	.331	.360	89.9	46.0	17.6
2025	.163	.242	.233	.345	.236	.307	93.7	51.6	14.7

There’s some definite improvement in the results, but he’s allowing harder contact overall while getting fewer swinging strikes. The answer may lie in the spray heatmap.

While this is a cumulative chart, he has so far allowed fewer fly balls on his heater and induced more grounders. Ground balls will usually have a higher batting average on balls in play, but they don’t usually produce more slugging. Despite that, his BABIP is the opposite of what you might expect.

Yamamoto’s BABIP overall is down 52 points from last year’s mark of .305. On his fastball, specifically, it has gone from .309 all the way down to .226. The HardHit% on it is up about 6 percentage points, but the Barrels/PA% is down from 7.7% to 2%. Despite that, it’s trending to have better run value than 2024. It’s already +5, which is where it ended last season.

And when Yamamoto allows fly balls — despite a higher average exit velocity and HardHit% than 2024, he has done a good job mitigating damage.

Year	BA	xBA	SLG	xSLG	wOBA	xwOBA	EV	HH%	BABIP
2024	.400	.418	.700	.751	.451	.510	91.4	45.2	.356
2025	.250	.330	.438	.567	.295	.379	95.2	56.3	.250

The exit velo and hard hit rate will regress to the mean a bit, but that means some of the other numbers could as well. Still, Stuff+ likes his fastball more this season (85 to 94) and, overall, his Pitching+ number of 110 is 10th-best among qualified starting pitchers in the majors.

Zone Profile

Yamamoto has shifted his zone profile a bit so far in 2025. He’s staying more out of the middle of the plate and is working more on the inside corner to right-handed hitters (outside corner for lefties).

He’s also working lower in the zone, which could help explain his ground ball rate jumping from 47.9% to 61.5%. In fact, his GB% 2nd-best in the majors at this point and would be tied for 7th-highest ground ball rate from a qualified starting pitcher in the last decade. Yamamoto isn’t the second coming of Derek Lowe, so that’s going to even out a bit. However, focusing slightly more on inducing grounders rather than trying to blow away hitters with his fastball seems to have fueled his early season success.

Splitter

Yamamoto’s splitter is actually performing better this season than last, when it was really, really good. He’s increased the usage by more than 5 percentage points and has enjoyed even more success. Every single category is better than it was in 2024.

Year	BA	xBA	SLG	xSLG	wOBA	xwOBA	EV	HH%	Whiff%
2024	.170	.190	.266	.256	.210	.156	87.3	38.5	38.6
2025	.098	.132	.176	.205	.130	.156	86.0	34.6	48.0

Nearly half of his splitters that have induced a swing were whiffs. That’s absolutely wild stuff. The only two pitchers with higher whiff rates on the splitter are Fernando Cruz (55.2%) and Logan Gilbert (50%). Cruz throws his splitter 56.4% (!) of the time out of the Yankees’ bullpen, while Gilbert (currently on the injured list) throws it 21.2% of the time. For what it’s worth, in the last five years, the highest whiff rate on the splitter by a starting pitcher was Frankie Montas‘ 51.6% in 2021. Next up was Kevin Gausman at 46.4%.

Suffice it to say, Yamamoto’s splitter is elite and is the biggest reason he has been as great as he has been so far, despite some of the numbers suggesting otherwise.

Sinker

A bit of a new wrinkle has been his sinker. He has almost doubled the usage rate from last season and has enjoyed much more success.

Year	BA	xBA	SLG	xSLG	wOBA	xwOBA	EV	HH%	BABIP
2024	.308	.258	.462	.328	.329	.256	87.7	50.0	.333
2025	.222	.282	.556	.371	.398	.359	90.3	57.1	.167

Again, with a lot of these numbers, they’ll regress to the mean, but despite allowing harder contact, he has almost tripled his whiff rate on the sinker from the 2024 mark (12.5% to 29.4%), which could help explain the low BABIP in the face of the batted ball metrics. His 107 Stuff+ on his sinker is the 10th-best among starters. He was 30th (103 Stuff+) last season.

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Yamamoto is a weird dude. A lot of these numbers would suggest that he’s not having a fantastic season so far — lower overall BABIP, yet higher ground ball rate. Worse chase rate, yet higher whiffs. Fastball getting hit hard, yet the results are better than last year. There’s a lot of red in his Statcast profile, even if some of these data scream it shouldn’t be that way.

It’s possible Yamamoto just might be a unicorn who is defying some what we know when it comes to pitching and evaluating pitching data. Then again, we could check back in a couple months down the road and see he’s more in line with what you’d expect with the numbers. The eye test would tell you he’s been one of the best pitchers in baseball this season. The numbers — some of them, at least — would agree.