Dodgers Target Roki Sasaki Very Interested in Specific Aspect of Next Team

Roki Sasaki will likely be signing with a group within the subsequent worldwide signing interval which opens Jan. 15. As Sasaki narrows down his decisions, he will likely be placing a deal with pitching improvement.

Joel Wolfe of Wasserman, Sasaki’s agent, divulged the 23-year-old pitcher’s thought course of isn’t typical.

“We’ve had quite a few conversations about group location, market dimension, group success – issues like that,” Wolfe instructed Invoice Plunkett of The Orange County Register. “He doesn’t appear to have a look at it within the typical approach that different gamers do. He has a extra long-term, international view of issues. I imagine Roki can also be very within the pitching improvement and the way a group goes to assist him get higher each within the close to future and over the course of his profession.”

Like Shohei Ohtani, Sasaki selected to affix MLB earlier than he was age-eligible to signal as a world free agent. As a result of Sasaki is signing as an beginner, group’s are restricted to providing him a contract from their worldwide bonus pool. Sasaki’s choice to make the leap to stateside baseball earlier than he may signal a profitable contract makes it abundantly clear cash isn’t a precedence at this level in his profession.

“Roki is certainly not a completed product. He is aware of it and the groups understand it. He’s extremely proficient. Everyone knows that,” Wolfe mentioned Monday. “However he’s a man that wishes to be nice. He’s not coming right here to be wealthy or to get an enormous contract. He needs to be nice. He needs to be one of many best ever. I see that now and he has articulated it.

“To be that he is aware of he has to problem himself. … I’m not talking for Roki. I’m talking my very own opinion that in an effort to take it to a different stage he (realized he) needed to come right here and play towards one of the best gamers daily and faucet into all of the assets that main league groups have to assist him turn into probably the greatest pitchers not simply to return out of NPB however in Main League Baseball. That’s what he needs. That’s why he got here.”

With a status of reworking struggling pitchers into stars, the Dodgers can supply Sasaki a path to greatness. As Sasaki is already seen as one of many best younger pitchers on the earth, there’s a risk he may emerge as the best pitcher to ever come out of Japan.

Larger than Hideo Nomo, larger than Yu Darvish, Sasaki can surpass all of them.