DALLAS — The hottest free agent in baseball was traveling Tuesday, getting ready to land in California, and start meeting next week with teams clamoring for his services.
He has never played a day in the major leagues and has only pitched in an MLB ballpark during the World Baseball Classic, but there’s not a GM or team who isn’t willing to spend every dollar they’re permitted to offer to order to sign him.
The name is Rōki Sasaki.
He’s the greatest 23-year-old pitcher on the planet, with a 100-mph fastball, devastating slider and split-fingered pitch. He was officially posted Tuesday, agent Joel Wolfe announced, providing teams a 45-day window to sign him.
Sasaki has teams drooling, going 29-15 with a 2.10 ERA in four years with the Chiba Lotte Marines, with 505 strikeouts in 394 ⅔ innings.
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He’ll also be quite the bargain since he’s under the age of 25 with less than six years’ experience. He must sign as an international amateur and can only receive money from a team’s international bonus pool, ranging from $5.1 million to $7.5 million.
No team is permitted to talk about a long-term contract or even promise a spot on the 40-man roster.
This is why money, Wolfe says, will be no factor.
“Given the gap in the bonus pool amounts is so negligible, my advice to him is don’t make a decision based on that,’ Wolfe said, “because the long-term arc of your career is where you’re going to earn your money.’
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Sasaki plans to meet with teams over the next two weeks before returning home to Japan, setting up in a central location during the first round of meetings.
“Teams have already begun sending presentations both in video and PowerPoint, PDF-form, that sort of thing,’ Wolfe said. “But we didn’t give teams a hard deadline to submit that information because we want them to be able to put the time in to do it right. Obviously, some teams were already working on these things, some of them for months I believe.”
The hope, Wolfe said, is for Sasaki to sign as close to the Jan. 15 international signing period as possible, providing time for him to get acclimated in his new city.
Sasaki has been heavily criticized in Japan for leaving NPB at a young age, two years before he’d be eligible for a massive payday like Yoshinobu Yamamoto received in his 12-year, $325 million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers last winter.
“A lot of people jumped on board there creating some false rumors about him and his family,” Wolfe said. “It was very detrimental to his mental state.”
While the Dodgers are the favorites to sign Sasaki, joining fellow Japanese stars Shohei Ohtani and Yamamoto, Wolfe reiterated that the field is wide open.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was careful not to even mention Sasaki’s name in his press briefing on Monday, but San Diego Padres manager Mike Shildt was effusive in his praise for Sasaki, even predicting they would land him, joining his mentor Yu Darvish.
“We fully expect to be right there in the mix,’ Shildt said, “and at the end of the day, have Sasaki a Padre.’
There’s speculation that Sasaki, who’s soft spoken and reserved with a dry sense of humor, could prefer a quieter place like San Diego over Los Angeles, the country’s second-largest city.
“I think that there’s an argument to be made that a smaller, mid-market team might be more beneficial for him as a soft landing coming from Japan, given what he’s been through’’ Wolfe said, “and not having an enjoyable experience with the media. I’m not saying it will be, I don’t know how he’s going to view it, but it might be beneficial for him to be in a smaller market. I really don’t know how he looks at it yet because I haven’t had a chance to really sit down and discuss it with him in great detail.”
Wolfe denied, however, that the Southern California teams would have an advantage being the closest U.S. cities to Japan.
“I think about five or 10 years ago that was something that maybe they weighed a little bit more,’’ Wolfe said, “but now you can fly direct from Japan to most of the major cities in the U.S. It’s not really that much of an issue anymore.”
Sasaki has not met with any teams yet but is already doing his homework.
“He’s talked to a lot of players, foreign players, that have been on his team with Chiba Lotte,” Wolfe said. “He asked a lot of questions about weather, about comfortability, about pitching development. And just watching what other Japanese players in the major leagues are doing and how they are doing.”
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