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“PADRES & ROCKET MAN”
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We are waiting.
They are waiting.
All of baseball, MLB and Japan, are waiting.

Wednesday is the day the window opens for Japanese pitching phenom Roki Sasaki to make his decision which team he signs with as an International Free Agent.

20-teams asked for meetings with the Chiba Lotte Marines sensation.
7-teams had formal sitdowns in Los Angeles.
3-teams had followup visits.

The Dodgers, Padres and surprisingly, Toronto, are the 3-finalists.

Not in the mix, the big money Yankees, the Mets, the Red Sox or the Mariners.

The price tag is reasonable, since he is not a veteran free agent.  He cannot command (30M) a year.  The team that signs him can pay him only the Max slot in their International signing pool, that goes from a high of (7.7M) to a lower amount of (5.7M), unless one of the three finalists makes deals to acquire more international signing money.

The Dodgers, by virtue of carry over money from a year ago, have some (10.7M) available in their 2025 pool.  The Padres were in the (6.2M) range.

The bonus is, he can stake a claim to big time sponsor endorsement money depending on where he winds up.  The Dodgers had 15-corporations comes on board as sponsors with the Shohei Ohtani acquisitions, and his Japanese sponsorship packages were part of his amazing contract in LA.

These talks have been just as secretive as years ago when Ohtani left Japan, and wound up with the Angels, a similar smaller financial deal that locked him in to the Halos for 6-star studded season.

How good is this righthander?  A (30-15) record. with a (2.02-ERA) in his career.

Not the experience of former Pacific Rim pitchers like Dice Matsuzaka..Hideo Nomo…Kenta Maeda or more recently Yosh Yamamoto.

But his stuff is vibrant-electric.  Scouts say he has the ingredients to become
a Roger Clemens, his fastball and splitter that explosive.  Polishing pitches 3-and-4 will be the next horizon for him to conquer.

Because he has done all these meetings in seclusion, no one really knows, with the exception of AJ Preller-Andrew Friedman and the people in Toronto, what Sasaki values the most.

It is the legacy, the tradition of a franchise?
World Series rings?
History of developing pitching?
History of rehabbing pitching injuries?
Past experiences of Japanese players with a certain team?
His friendships with Japanese players named Darvish-Ohtani-Suzuki-Kikuchi?
The market size and endorsement possibilities?
The wish to be a star rather than be in the shadows of other players?

So many unknowns, except this:

The Dodgers close deals over their long years of baseball dominance.
The Padres have built something dynamic in the last four years.
The Blue Jays want the next star to go with current stars as Canada’s team.

We wait to see if he saves the Padres off season, a winter in which they have done nothing yet.  Wait to see if this is the final piece of the puzzle of a spectacular Dodgers winter. Or is this a new beginning for baseball in Toronto.

The Rocket Man is about to make his choice.  A fun week ahead for somebody’s pitching staff.

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