Has Free Agent Recruiting Gotten Out Of Hand?
Free agent starting pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto is the best available player left on the market. And boy, oh boy is the recruiting going full speed ahead.
Yamamoto has been everywhere the past few weeks. He met with the Yankees in Los Angeles. He met with the Los Angeles Dodgers, who are still spending despite signing Shohei Ohtani.
READ: DODGERS PUTTING OHTANI MONEY TO GOOD USE ALREADY WITH MAJOR TRADE
There was a meeting with the New York Mets. And the Philadelphia Phillies. The San Francisco Giants got a meeting.
Then he requested more meetings. One at Mets owner Steve Cohen's home in Connecticut. He wanted a second meeting with the Yankees too. Bryce Harper FaceTime'd him. The Dodgers brought in a contingent of stars including Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith and Bobby Miller. At every stop, jetting around the country, Yamamoto's had the red carpet rolled out for him.
And this is becoming a trend for free agent players across the sport. It may not be a good one.
In college football, fans lament the rise of the entitled transfer. Fresh off the excesses of high school recruiting, young players then get the same treatment once they enter the portal after six months of being unhappy with their place on the depth chart or NIL opportunities. It seems like baseball's heading in a similar direction.

Los Angeles - Los Angeles Dodgers player Shohei Ohtani is introduced at a press conference at Dodger Stadium last week. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
Free Agent Recruiting Sets Players Up For Failure
It's all well and good for players to want to get to know the organizations they'll be playing for. But the extreme measures, where recruiting videos and endless meetings and organized dinners and pulling players from their winter vacations or offseason family time is getting a bit out of hand.
It's a bit more excusable for Yamamoto, who's never played in the domestic U.S. baseball league. But how many more meetings with each team does he need to make a decision?
Not to mention that as soon as he signs, he'll immediately become an employee of the team, subject to the same criticisms, hard work and frustrations that every other player is subject to. Jeff McNeil isn't having dinner at Steve Cohen's house every weekend, as just one example.
Buttering up a player, as we've seen all too often in college, just leads to inevitable disappointment when the special treatment dries up soon afterwards and they're treated as just another cog in the machine. But that's seemingly what we're doing with each big free agent that hits the market.
Of course, there's also no concern from the virtue signaling league, or liberal fans, about the prolific amount of carbon emissions generated by Yamamoto or other free agent players flying all over the country. Suddenly the existential climate change threat disappears when a big free agent's available.
Yamamoto's expected to make a decision soon; a necessity considering his posting window ends in early January. And thank God for that, we don't have to hear about all the special treatment teams need to give him before he signs his ~$250-300 million contract. Who knows how many more meetings that'll take though.