MMO Exclusive: Right-Handed Pitcher, Jordan Yamamoto

Growing up in Hawaii, Jordan Yamamoto knew that he’d really need to impress in order to make his dream of pitching in the major leagues happen.

The right-hander took the mentality of not only trying to be the best in Hawaii, but trying to stand out in the entire United States.

The high school Yamamoto attended and was later drafted out of, Saint Louis High School in Honolulu, was well known for churning out quality athletes, including several current NFL players.

One prominent alumnus who provided Mets fans with many great memories was outfielder Benny Agbayani, who Yamamoto frequently texts and joins every December for a baseball clinic in Hawaii.

Yamamoto, 25, speaks highly of how well-rounded the Hawaiian culture is, noting that their community is tight-knit. His penchant for giving back and helping others was visible soon after he signed with the Milwaukee Brewers in the 12th round of the 2014 MLB Draft.

After receiving a bad haircut in Helena, Montana, the former rookie-level for the Brewers, Yamamoto decided that he would try the craft out himself. His teammates became his guinea pigs and were appreciative that Yamamoto took haircutting seriously and started to get very good at it. Yamamoto would not charge any of his teammates for the haircuts, and if he did receive any tips, he says that went right back into buying better styling equipment.

After spending his first four seasons in the Brewers organization, Yamamoto was dealt with three other players to the Miami Marlins for Christian Yelich in the 2018 offseason.

Yamamoto would make his major league debut a year later, tossing seven scoreless innings against the St. Louis Cardinals at home. He followed that up with another seven scoreless innings in his next start, which also came against the Cardinals. According to Elias Sports, Yamamoto became the second pitcher since 1893 to begin his career with two scoreless starts against the same team.

Yamamoto finished his rookie season with a 4-5 record in 15 starts with a 4.46 ERA and 9.4 strikeouts per nine. His sophomore season was a forgettable one, as his ERA ballooned to 18.26 in four games (three starts) over 11.1 innings pitched. It should be noted that Yamamoto dealt with a forearm strain at the end of his 2019 season, and that very well may have carried over into the truncated 2020 season as his average 4-seam fastball velocity was down nearly two miles-per-hour (91.5 mph in 2019; 89.8 mph in 2020).

The Marlins DFA’d Yamamoto late in January 2021 and worked out a trade with the New York Mets less than a week later, with the Mets sending minor league infielder Federico Polanco to Miami. Yamamoto had a solid spring with the Mets, posting a 1.08 ERA in 8.1 innings pitched. He made two appearances for the Mets in May before leaving his second game (first start) against the Marlins on May 23 with right shoulder soreness.

Yamamoto has been rehabbing his shoulder in Port St. Lucie, hoping to contribute to the Mets during a time where their starting pitching depth has been compromised.

I had the privilege of speaking with Yamamoto where he talked about growing up in Hawaii, being traded to the Mets, and his thoughts on Major League Baseball’s crackdown on foreign substances.

MMO: Who were some of your favorite players growing up?

Yamamoto: It’s going to be very, I guess, ironic for being on the Mets now, but I actually grew up liking the Red Sox. Pitching-wise, that was the era of Jonathan Papelbon and my favorite catcher was Jason Varitek.

That whole 2007 team when I was in Little League, that was kind of the time that I was growing up and kind of getting more serious about baseball and starting to actually watch players. The Red Sox was the team that I usually watched more than anyone.

MMO: What was growing up in Hawaii like? And what was your earliest memory of the game?

Yamamoto: When I first started playing baseball when I was playing tee-ball and then in Little League, my mom told me that they looked at me when I was playing and coaches would say this kid’s not playing baseball for a living. They were like, we’ll just let him play and see if he likes it.

When I turned 10, that was when it kind of clicked. I started playing year-round and that’s when I really started focusing on baseball. That’s when my parents realized that I was pretty decent, and then I played year-round for the rest of my childhood all the way up to high school and everything.

MMO: At what point during your development did you start honing in on pitching? What was the competition like in Hawaii?

Yamamoto: Through high school I never really [pitched], that’s the thing. I always tried to take myself as an athlete so I was a catcher and pitcher my first three years of high school. And then I realized that my body was taking a toll; trying to pitch on Fridays, catch on Tuesdays, pitch on Fridays, catch on Tuesdays, and not having any in-between time to throw bullpens or anything. My body was taking a toll.

In my senior year, I told my coach I thought it would be better if I was in the outfield, just rolling it out there on the days I didn’t pitch. He said, “Okay, as long as we got the other catcher in tune with what we’re doing.” I kind of helped out the other catcher to get ready to be able to catch all the pitchers.

It’s always going to be good competition and it’s because we have the mentality that we have over there. It’s different than the States. Up here, the competition is good and the players are good, but down there the mentality is a little different. It’s hey, we’ve got to perform to be able to get our name out there [mentality]. If you’re in the States, you can go and drive and travel to different states, you know, playing different tournaments for a lot cheaper than Hawaii kids can. So it’s kind of like we get a shot and our opportunity, let’s take advantage of it.

We have one, maybe two tournaments that we go to a year, and that’s only during the summertime. We have to be ready to perform over there to compete with the rest of the kids. It’s kind of one of those things that I try to stress to the kids back home whenever I go back. My dad coaches and when I go back I ask, ‘What’s your goal?’ And they say, “We want to be the best in the state.” I’m like, ‘That’s a good goal to have. But at the end of the day, you don’t want to be the best in the state, you want to be the best in the country.’

Hawaii is only so big, and that’s kind of the mindset that I had coming out of Hawaii was that Hawaii was small; you have a million people in the state. And now you have millions and millions of other kids out there playing baseball in the United States traveling to all these tournaments getting better. So that was my mindset of we’ve got to be able to train to get to play like the kids in the mainland and not so much the kids in Hawaii. Just because you’re the best in Hawaii doesn’t mean you’re the best in the nation. That’s kind of the mindset that we took.

The high school that I went to was very good about that because we are a very athletic high school. I’m sure you already know it’s the same high school as Marcus Mariota, Tua Tagovalio, and Kamalei Correa. We have Rico Garcia with the Giants. We have a lot of kids from our high school who went to the professionals. We also have Benny Agbayani, so a lot of big names came out of there.

Our high school was very athletic oriented to where the competition and the sports are really good. It’s very hard to make teams. You had competition at every single position, it wasn’t just you’re handed this position. It’s always competition no matter where you are. It doesn’t matter if you’re a senior, if you can’t compete you aren’t going to play. That’s kind of what our high school was driven off of. I think that gave me the drive to become a professional athlete, to be able to be the best on the team, the best of the state and one of the top players in the nation.

MMO: You mentioned Benny Agbayani. He’s one of three Hawaiian-born players that had a big impact with the Mets, along with Sid Fernandez and Ron Darling. Have you ever had the chance to meet and interact with any of those three players?

Yamamoto: Yeah, so because big Benny graduated from my high school, when I was a freshman he came in to talk to everybody who was trying out for baseball. Over the years, we’d text back and forth and we’d talk often, and every December we have a clinic that goes on. We bring out a bunch of coaches and a lot of the professional baseball players who are playing or have played; they usually come back and help out the kids of the next generation and Benny is always there. We always talk and it’s actually pretty cool.

Fun fact about Sid Fernandez: I actually played with one of his nephews when I was in Little League. I never got to meet him but my dad was a coach and his nephew was actually on our team.

MMO: That’s so great to hear about Agbayani continuing to give back to his community.

Yamamoto: That’s the thing about the Hawaiian guys: our community is a very tight-knit community. You can ask any of the baseball players who are from Hawaii, that’s just how Hawaii is. It’s very family-oriented. We will do stuff for ourselves and we do stuff for the next generation.

MMO: You were selected by the Milwaukee Brewers in the 12th round of the 2014 MLB Draft. You also had a commitment to go play for the University of Arizona. Was it difficult to forgo that scholarship to sign with the Brewers?

Yamamoto: Oh, yeah, I mean, that was one of my dream schools to play for in Arizona. When I went there it just felt like home. It felt like one of those things that I could see myself there for four years. But when the draft rolled around and they called my name and gave me the number, I couldn’t turn that down. My thing was, I wanted to be a professional baseball player, I wanted to be a part of that one percent because who knows what could happen if I went to college, especially Arizona being a very big party school, you know? [Laughs.] So I was like, I’m going to go play professionally.

We used to hang out with some of the guys from Arizona, we’d go to Scottsdale. I’m just not a very big school guy. I just like baseball and baseball alone. I like school but it was one of those things that I thought that baseball was definitely a way for me to further my life and make my future that I’m building and that was one of the ways that I could do that.

At the end of the day, I have no regrets. I’ve been on three teams now but for the most part, I’ve created lifetime memories with some teammates that have become lifetime friendships. It’s definitely a pretty cool opportunity.

MMO: I remember reading a great article from The Athletic that detailed how you started cutting some of your teammates’ hair in the minor leagues. Can you talk about how that started?

Yamamoto: We were in Helena, Montana. It was not a bad place but it’s very hard to find barbers. It initially started when I went to get a haircut at a barbershop and they messed my hair up so bad. It was bad! I was like, I wear a hat for a living so it’s not too bad. I ended up buying my first set of clippers and my teammates said, “We wear hats for a living, you can practice on us.”

I ended up practicing [on them] and over the years I just got better and better. I’ve been cutting for almost seven years, I still do. So the Mets’ guys with the whole COVID thing, they couldn’t really go out; with the Marlins, too, it was the same thing, they couldn’t really go out and get their hair cut. I started cutting for them and it’s actually been pretty fun.

MMO: And considering how little minor leaguers earn, you’re actually doing them a great service by saving them some money.

Yamamoto: Exactly. And that’s what it came down to. It wasn’t about looking for extra cash to help me. It’s more of I’ve got a talent and let me use it because in the minor leagues we’re making $500 every two weeks, really nothing. If I can help out the guys in any way [I would].

The tips [I got] just went back to buying new gear so that I can cut better. Essentially it’s [buying] new blades, new razors to cut hair. It was never let me save this money and go buy myself something. It’s always like, hey, what am I going to use [it] for? Can I get the money to buy a new blade this month?

MMO: What are your memories from your major league debut tossing seven shutout innings against the St. Louis Cardinals on June 12, 2019?

Yamamoto: That was definitely a fun one. I think the best thing was just having my family there. It kind of sucks to see some of the guys nowadays make their debuts, at least last year, and their families couldn’t be there. To me, that was the icing on the cake having my family there in person watching me, and not watching on TV. Being able to hug them after and actually have them on the field with me was a great moment. That was the best part of my whole career so far, and also the best part of my debut night.

MMO: You’re a pitcher that relies more on movement and changing speeds rather than fastball velocity. One pitch that I was impressed with in particular was your slider – which created a ton of vertical and horizontal movement. The slider was also your putaway pitch more than a quarter of the time in your rookie season. Can you talk about that pitch and how you utilize it in your arsenal?

Yamamoto: I actually didn’t develop that pitch until my senior year of high school. I learned that pitch as a senior in high school and when I went to pro ball they told me it’s becoming almost the same as your curveball. They told me to stop it and for three years in the minor leagues I didn’t throw it. The only time I started throwing it again was when I came to the Marlins in 2018.

I didn’t throw it from 2014-2017. I was strictly a fastball/curveball guy with an occasional changeup because they said that we had to throw that at least ten percent, and if not, we’d get fined. It was really like a development thing that we had to throw changeups. It definitely worked out and it kind of helped me to kind of reset my slider. I got it back in 2019 in the big leagues and I’ve been working on it ever since.

MMO: What was your first reaction when you heard you were traded to the Mets?

Yamamoto: It was a good feeling. For me, it’s a business. People are going to get traded and at least I’m fortunate enough to be traded to a team that wants me and fortunate enough to be able to have another opportunity with another team to further my career. I wasn’t just DFA’d and sent down so it’s most definitely a good opportunity to have a fresh start with a different team coming off of a 2020 season with a very terrible ERA. It was definitely needed. I think much needed for myself and for my mindset, and it’s been good since.

We’re working with all the trainers here coming back off the IL and it’s been really good. Positive feedback from the doctors and from the trainers. Everything’s been going really well.

MMO: Speaking of the IL, you were transferred to the 60-day back in May after leaving your May 23rd start against the Marlins with right shoulder soreness. How has your rehab been going and do you think you’ll be back around late July early August?

Yamamoto: I’m not sure when I’m coming back, that’s all up to the higher-ups. But as of right now, everything has been on track. I’ve been throwing and been feeling really good lately, my shoulder has been feeling really good. It was just one of those sucky situations when you get your call up to come back up to the big leagues and your first start is against your previous team. And then I get hurt in the game. That was kind of a crappy feeling. But at the end of the day, it all works in God’s plan and whatever He asks of me, I’m going to trust it and run with it.

MMO: Although it was just two games this season, I noticed that you utilized your changeup more than you ever have in your MLB career to date (12.6%). I know during spring training you talked about how Jeremy Hefner was helping you define your changeup. Where are you at with the comfort level of that pitch?

Yamamoto: It’s crazy, I was never able to throw a changeup; it was more like I’m going to try and manipulate the ball to make it move. But in reality, that’s not good. I could never pronate my hands where I can get the changeup moving that a lot of guys have. What I did with Hefner and all the analytics guys was they came up and they showed me a splitter. So that’s kind of what I started using was a splitter instead of a changeup, because I don’t have to pronate so much using a splitter. It’s just grip-and-rip and throw as hard as you can and pull down on it. It’s been working well and I think that that’s one of my better pitches now.

MMO: Many Mets pitchers have lauded the work Jeremy Hefner has done as pitching coach. What are your thoughts on Hefner in the work you’ve done with him?

Yamamoto: Oh, it’s been a blast. Working with Hefner has been fun. He’s there, he listens to you on your concerns, he listens to what you feel. He’ll be like, “If it doesn’t feel right then we’ll work on something else. If this was good we’ll work on it.” It’s never just a one-set way, or his way or the highway. It’s always let’s have a conversation about it. How does it feel? What can we change?

That’s what I kind of like is having that conversation with trainers, pitching coaches, and the coaching staff about anything really. Just being able to have a dialogue to better my career, rather than being a robot and just doing it one way or you’re out of here. So, that’s been good that I’m able to have the conversation, both of us together, have a conversation on what we like, what we don’t like, how we need to do things, how we go about things. It’s been really good.

MMO: Are you the type of player that readily embraces and utilizes the advanced data and technologies that are available to you?

Yamamoto: Yeah, as you said, I’m not a guy who relies on fastball [velocity], I rely on movement. Analytics are big on movement. If I can perfect my movement, being able to be consistent with the movement, it’s only going to make me that much better. Whether that be spin rate, horizontal break, vertical break, vertical ride, just everything and anything that can help me as a pitcher, I’m all in on.

MMO: I’m curious what your thoughts are on the new enforcement of banning foreign substances?

Yamamoto: That’s a good question and definitely a hot topic. At the end of the day, it is what it is, you know? For me, with the whole Sergio Romo and Max Scherzer thing, you can check us; it’s been in the rules that we can’t use that stuff. And at the same time, it’s like people said, the balls have been changing every single year, there have never been three years in a row where the ball is the same since I’ve been up there.

It’s like someone said, too, the balls are always rubbed up differently. You have some clubbies that rub it up a certain way, some rub it up differently. You have different mud use; some people use their hands, some people use gloves. It’s never a set way that the balls are rubbed. Especially in a game when you’re, say, in Miami, where it’s 100 percent humidity, you’re in a 95-degree dome, and you’re running through three jerseys because you’re sweating through them so much. Now your arms are all sweaty and you have to get a grip on the ball because when the umpire is sweaty and throws a ball out of his bag back to you, his sweat goes on the ball that turns that dust that’s on it into water, and turns it to mud now. Now you have no grip.

A lot of people started using it for that sense of let me get grip on the ball because if not, I’m going to be hitting guys left and right. Especially on off-speed [stuff], it’s not so much the fastball, the fastball is straight. It’s not too bad because we’ve all done that, but now trying to throw a slider with no grip where the ball naturally has a slip out of your hand but not slipping off to the point where it’s leaking out and it’s flying behind the batter. That’s a little different story.

With me, I already have a high spin rate, so to use that stuff on off-speed stuff is only going to make it bounce halfway to home plate, which is not good. And especially now that I developed a splitter, if you have stick on your hand and you try to use a splitter, it’s not going to spin the way it has to because it has to slip off your middle finger. At the end of the day, guys have their preferences, and guys have done what they have done. It’s a rule that MLB enforced and we can’t do anything about it. It’s been in the rulebook and now they’re enforcing it. We can’t really be mad about that, it’s always been there.

MMO: You’re certainly not the first one to bring up the inconsistencies in the baseball. Your teammate Pete Alonso also brought that up during a press conference in early June. It seems like many players are taking issue with the year-to-year composition differences in the ball more than pitchers being able to use sticky stuff for grip.

Yamamoto: I forget what pitcher it was when we were at Citi Field, it wasn’t our team, it was a different team. I’m not going to name names. But if it gets to the point where you’re throwing with a packed house of 30,000 fans, and you’re throwing and you can hear the ball stick off your fingers and you can hear the sticky substance every time you throw the ball with a packed house. Now you’re getting to the point of too much. But if he has no grip when he’s throwing his fastball, you’re going to have a lot more situations like Kevin Pillar where you get hit in the face, because the pitcher has no sense of awareness of where the ball is going. He’s getting lucky with those in the zone.

If it helps you get a grip, then why not? But if it gets to the point where we can hear it from the dugout, and you’re pitching and it’s sticking off your hand, that’s a little much. We’re competitors in this game. We’ve got to find the edge, but the edge is not loading your hand up to the point where people in the stands can hear it coming off your hand. That’s a little much for me.

When I came up in 2019, the balls were like cue balls, they had no seams. All of a sudden, 2020 rolls around and they want more hitting, so they wind the ball tighter. Then you have this year where they raised the seams. It’s very inconsistent every year, the year to year on what the balls feel like. And to me, it’s like, make the balls all the same. Why not just understand that some of the pitchers are getting better. I’m getting better, the hitters are trying to go for more home runs so, therefore, their strikeout rates are going to be higher because it’s not like before, back in the day, two-strike battles. Nowadays, its two strikes still hit a home run. At some point we’ve got to understand, as a baseball community, that hitters are trying to hit home runs, hitters are trying to get their slugging percentages up. Teams could care less about your walk and strikeout rates anymore. It’s more of how many home runs [did you hit]? How many RBIs are you putting up on the board? And that’s what gets people paid. Not so much as he struck out 30% of the time, okay, we’re going to give them less money. No, it’s he hit 30 home runs, okay, we’ll pay more even though he’s stuck out 40% of the time.

For me, pitchers are getting better, a lot better, and hitters are trying for home runs. And that’s what the game wants because people want home runs. People don’t like to watch a game where there are zero runs on both sides. They want to see the long balls, they want to see the high-scoring games because those are the fun games to watch are the ones that people are hitting six home runs on one side and five homers on the other side.

MMO: You raise many good points and I think a lot of that has to do with the way in which analytics has really changed how the game is played and the various strategies behind it.

Yamamoto: The analytics are saying you’ll maybe score one extra run a game if you bunt and hit and run, versus if you swing for the fences, and you have a decent team of six out of the nine guys who can hit 30 home runs a year, you’ll probably score three-four more runs than if you’re bunting guys over. So essentially, the analysts are saying, do this because that’s what guys are saying wins games. That’s why guys are doing. At the end of the day, I’m going to have 50 more RBIs throughout the year, or potentially 15 more home runs at the end of the year. It’s analytics that is taking over the game and that’s where the sticky stuff comes in, because the analysts are saying your numbers are jumping up because you’re using this stuff. Okay, let’s use this stuff and have your pitches play more and hitters do this because analysts say you can be better off.

That’s where I think the game is going and that’s where the old school mentality comes in of letting the kids play. Let them learn how to play, and let them learn to play the game right, as they would say in the old school way of bunting guys over and hit and runs. At the end of the day, it’s not up to any of the players, it’s up to the coaching staff and the front office on how they want to play the games, how they want to sign guys, and do everything.

If all of a sudden next year we continue this trend of pitchers aren’t using anything and hitters still aren’t hitting, what are you going to do? Move the mound back a foot like you’re trying in certain leagues? Now you’re taking all the credibility of the guys who came before us where the mound has never been moved for 100 years, and guys have made the Hall of Fame hitting .300 in their career. Now it’s going to be you have to hit .450 to be in the Hall of Fame because they moved the mound back farther and now guys are getting hits four or five out of 10 times rather than two or three out of 10 times, and that’s a big difference in runs. That’s a big difference and a game-changer that you’re just changing the authenticity of baseball.

MMO: Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see what changes MLB implements in the next CBA. I’m sure they’re keeping an eye on the various rule changes they made for each level of the minor leagues to gauge what works and what doesn’t. Something I think MLB really needs to do focus on now is growing the brand of the game and marketing the stars better.

Yamamoto: Exactly. There’s a reason why when they do mic up guys, you read the comments on MLB’s post and it’s we should have this more often! Baseball players are human and people want to find a way to relate to the baseball player. And if they see something in the game and think that was funny and they find that they can relate to that, that’s fun! People will end up watching.

Find the players like Fernando Tatís, Anthony Rizzo, and Francisco Lindor mic’d up. It’s one thing that people want to hear, which is what they’re saying on a day-to-day basis versus just seeing them on the field and basing their whole personality or their whole persona on how they carry themselves based on their baseball [play] and not what they actually feel in the dugout, what they actually feel on the basepaths, on the field, on the mound, or in the box. Just personalizing people and making them feel and making people understand that we are human too is only going to make the game better.

MMO: Thanks for your time, Jordan. Best of luck in your rehab and with the rest of the season.

Yamamoto: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Follow Jordan Yamamoto on Twitter, @jyamaz50.