Former big league outfielder Josh Reddick tried to blast the Dodgers’ signing of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, but he ended up taking plenty of criticism, too.
After Yamamoto agreed to a 12-year, $325 million deal to join two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani in Los Angeles, Reddick, who last appeared in an MLB game with the Diamondbacks in 2021 and retired earlier this year, posted on X to ask, “How do you give a guy $325 million without ever throwing a pitch in MLB.”
Then, when someone replied, “Baseball is ruined,” Reddick said that he agreed with the statement.
But then users started bringing up the fact that Reddick won the 2017 World Series title with the Astros, a group that later emerged at the center of a cheating scandal that involved sign-stealing en route to their World Series title.
Reddick hit a career-best .314 that year across 134 regular-season games, though that number dipped to .169 — with a .413 OPS — across 18 postseason games.
“How do you cheat and then still say you’re a ‘world champion’?” one user wrote on X, referencing Reddick’s bio on the social media platform.
The former Gold Glove winner didn’t reply to that specific post, but he wrote back to another user that commented on how Reddick didn’t admit to cheating like other Astros allegedly did.
“Why would I apologize when I know other teams were doing the same thing? They didn’t apologize to me,” Reddick wrote in his reply.
In Japan last year, Yamamoto went 16-6 across 23 outings in 2023, compiling a 1.21 ERA and will be adding to the Dodgers’ rotation that already acquired Tyler Glasnow, who Los Angeles added via a trade — and an extension.
Yamamoto, 25, pitched for the Orix Buffaloes of Nippon Professional Baseball, and he has won the league’s version of the Cy Young Award to cap each of the past three seasons.
And while it topped the $324 million deal the Yankees gave Gerrit Cole, the Dodgers had plenty of flexibility to work with after Ohtani deferred about 97 percent of his $700 million contract until after his 10-year deal expires.