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The story
A stat showing that Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto leads all of MLB in Quality Start (QS) rate has become a hot topic. On 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo” (Anything Goes Live) board, comments ranged from “Isn’t he a Cy Young candidate?” to “He’s better than Ohtani as a pitcher,” while discussion also spread to the opt-out clause in his contract and the reasons he’s succeeding despite being on the short side.
What people said
Didn't he come out of the bullpen the day after starting during the postseason climax and shut the door?
That guy's innings totals are trash anyway
Not giving up runs is literally the pitcher's job
Miji (Yamamoto) and Ohtani are just different species
But a fully healthy Ohtani is just insane, right?
There's almost nobody else in MLB who's both a finesse pitcher and can throw 100 mph
Haven't they beefed up the bullpen at all?
The Orix spirit (his old NPB team, the Orix Buffaloes) has infected the bullpen
Sale's got a better ERA than Yamamoto over the same number of starts, and he's got the same win total too
Going 6 innings with 3 runs allowed is actually harder than it looks
That's because you're only looking at the stat line from his best days
Because with the state of the Dodgers' bullpen, there's this vibe that he should just throw complete games
That's just because there are guys even crazier than him out there
That relief appearance in the final game was cutting it close, no doubt
Though it's on the team for using him that way
Even the opposing team's fans and manager were shouting about it
How many years till the next renewal, then?
There's a free-agency option after year 6 and year 8
There's an opt-out after year 6
He's supposedly got a bad knee — no way he could handle the outfield
He's the strongest DH there is
How is he shutting hitters down with that frame?
It's the guidance of Master Yada (a pun on 'Yoda' — his personal trainer)
A 4th-round draft pick
Doesn't lift weights
Skipped Tommy John surgery for conservative treatment
Big mouth
A guy who checks every box MLB nerds love to hate
"I am a killer"
Some random high schooler: "Wait, Yamamoto only went in the 4th round of the draft? Just how insane is pro ball…" (despair)
Judging by how Skubal and Snell are gravitating toward him, he must get treated like royalty
He's shown that any Japanese pitcher might have a shot at this
It looks like anyone could do it, yet he's the only one who actually can
Matsuzaka was really only about 179cm too, not that different, but nobody ever called him short
MLB's own Dr. It's-Fine (a joking nickname for the trainer, meaning he always says injuries are okay)
His shoulder's basically playing chicken with a lit fuse until he retires at this point
Just hope all that reckless usage doesn't come back to bite him later
Is there really no other factor?
Probably really is just the bigger glove — once your tells are completely read, hitters time everything, you run out of places to throw, and you turn into a walk machine
Background and Key Points
Quality Start (QS) is a decades-old counting stat, not an official MLB category: a pitcher earns one by working at least six innings while allowing three earned runs or fewer. It rewards consistency over dominance, which is exactly why a QS-rate leaderboard and a Cy Young leaderboard don’t have to match. Yamamoto, a 4th-round NPB draft pick out of the Orix Buffaloes who reportedly skipped Tommy John surgery for conservative treatment and doesn’t lift weights in the conventional sense, signed a 12-year contract with the Dodgers that reportedly includes opt-out language after year six and a further team/player option mechanism around year eight — details the thread itself was still working out in real time.
The thread wasn’t actually arguing about whether Yamamoto is good; it split on what “good” should be measured by. One camp treated the QS-rate stat as proof he deserves Cy Young consideration; another countered that award voting still leans on ERA, win totals, and complete-game workhorse numbers, where a stacked Dodgers bullpen and his own postseason relief outing dilute his case. A third thread — literally — veered into whether his usage (an estimated 3,000 NPB pitches a year, plus a relief appearance the day after a start) is quietly mortgaging his long-term health.
What outside readers likely miss: at roughly 178cm, Yamamoto is unremarkable by NPB standards but genuinely undersized for an MLB starter, which is why his success is treated domestically as a referendum on whether Japan’s next generation of shorter right-handers has a real path to MLB stardom — a subtext the posters gesture at but never spell out explicitly.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Livegalileo/”Nandemo Jikkyo”) thread “[Great News] Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s QS Rate Is No. 1 in MLB wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.”
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