Red Sox waiting to hear if they'll get meeting with Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki
The Red Sox are waiting to find out if they’ll get a seat at the table to meet with 23-year-old Japanese right-hander Roki Sasaki. While the young hurler is meeting with other teams, Boston continues to wait and see on whether they’ll get a meeting this offseason.
“Right now, we do not [have a meeting scheduled]. But, I don’t know that there’s any finality to that,” said Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow to The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier. “We’ve obviously been engaged and would welcome the opportunity to participate in the process and hope that we’ll have the chance to do that.”
Breslow traveled to Japan to watch Sasaki pitch during the middle of this season. Last week, Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com reported that the Red Sox were expected to make a "very serious" pitch to Sasaki, giving the club as good a chance as any American League team to lure the talented righty away from the West Coast.
"In the AL, the Red Sox are very serious about making a pitch to the Sasaki team. The main selling point might be the history of Japanese pitchers having success and positive experiences playing in Boston: Daisuke Matsuzaka, (Koji) Uehara, and Junichi Tazawa," Mayo said.
“They have an impressive pitching development program, and it certainly doesn’t hurt when the general manager, Craig Breslow, can speak directly to it (as opposed to just handing it off to ‘the experts”). Breslow also personally scouted Sasaki for one of his starts in Japan in September."
Sasaki will be coveted by many teams across the league; he already turned down a meeting with the Phillies last week.
“We have not been invited to talk to him at this point,” head of Phillies baseball operations Dave Dombrowski told reporters Friday. “I’m not making any proclamations because we haven’t been told, but we’re probably running a little bit late if we’re going to be invited to the table. We’ve sent in our original information to him that was requested. They know that we would very much like to have a presentation. So far, we haven’t been invited to the table.”
New Red Sox catcher red hot in Venezuelan Winter League; a look at other catching options in system
Dombrowski quickly pivoted and traded for the Marlins’ Jesus Luzardo, giving the Phillies one of the premier starting rotations in the game.
Due to Sasaki being under the age of 25, he is considered an international amateur free agent. Teams around the league can only offer him international amateur bonus pool money. MLB’s assigned pool values are capped at $7.55 million, while teams around the league can trade for additional pool space. The Red Sox have a bonus pool of just under $6.3 million they can offer the hard-throwing righty.
Money is not reportedly a driving force behind Sasaki’s free agent decision-making. According to various reports from teams, the Yankees, Mets, Cubs, and Rangers have met with Sasaki, while the Giants (according to the San Francisco Chronicle) are “believed” to have met with the prized right-handed pitcher.
Sasaki, who was posted by the Chiba Lotte Marines earlier this month, is expected to select a team between Jan. 15 (the opening of the international signing period) and Jan. 23 (when his posting period closes). The Dodgers have long been considered the favorites to land Sasaki.
