How Yoshinobu Yamamoto became baseball's most coveted free agent - ESPN

YOSHINOBU YAMAMOTO'S BAG of tricks is an actual bag.

Inside it, he carries a yoga mat, wooden blocks, tiny soccer balls and mini-javelins. When he's ready, the 25-year-old Yamamoto lays out his yoga mat, arches himself into a backbend and pretzels his body with the precision of a contortionist. He lifts himself into headstands and corkscrews his hips and legs. He pushes up into handstands and walks on his palms toward a wall, against which he can lean and balance on one hand. He steadies himself on the blocks to get the feel for his body's positioning, and when he's done with that he stands up and chucks the size 1 soccer balls into a wall to warm up his right arm. Then he heads to the field to fling the javelins distances inconceivable to his teammates, who try to replicate the practice and chuckle at their comparative ineptitude.

None of this is the typical training regimen for a pitcher — for most athletes, really, but particularly not in baseball, a paint-by-numbers sort of sport that sneers at anything out of the ordinary. There is room for independent thinkers, for those who dare try something different, but it comes with a prerequisite: greatness.

Yamamoto has earned the right to carry the black duffel — not only is he a great pitcher, but arguably the greatest ever in Nippon Professional Baseball. He won three straight MVP awards and three consecutive Sawamura Awards, Japan's equivalent of the Cy Young. Now he is the best free agent in Major League Baseball, the one inspiring a bidding war among the game's most moneyed teams that's expected to conclude before the new year and perhaps as early as this week.

At 5-foot-10 and 176 pounds, Yamamoto will be among the smallest starting pitchers in MLB when he debuts