SAN FRANCISCO -- Potential Giants target Roki Sasaki is spending the holidays with his family back in Japan, but on Monday, his agent gave fresh details about the pursuit of the most intriguing player left on the market this offseason.
Joel Wolfe of Wasserman said Sasaki met with teams in person earlier this month and is in the process of deciding whether to hold more meetings or begin a second round, which would include narrowing the field and could include visits to ballparks. Sasaki had two-thirds of MLB organizations show interest after he was posted, but Wolfe would not confirm specific meetings or suitors out of respect for the process, which he said was a complicated one. On a Zoom call with reporters, Wolfe called it a "very unique process" for a "very unique player."
Sasaki, 23, is viewed as the best international player in the class that will be eligible to sign starting Jan. 15 and will immediately become one of the sport's best pitching prospects. He is potentially sacrificing hundreds of millions by coming over to the United States early, but Wolfe said he has learned that his client is very driven to prove himself in MLB.
"Roki is by no means a finished product -- he knows it and the teams know it," Wolfe said. "He's incredibly talented, we all know that, but he is a guy that wants to be great. He's not coming here just to be rich or get a huge contract. He wants to be great. He wants to be one of the greatest ever. I see that now and he has articulated it. To be that, he knows he has to challenge himself."
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Wolfe said he did not ask teams to refrain from talking about meetings, but they have done so anyway. It's not known exactly how many meetings Sasaki had, but Wolfe did give some insight into the process.
Shortly after Sasaki was posted earlier this month, Wolfe sent a letter inviting every team to send any pertinent information for Sasaki to go over. He said 20 teams submitted information, which ranged from PowerPoint presentations and short films to books about how they could help Sasaki reach his potential.
"It was like a Roki film festival," Wolfe said.
MLB
From there, in-person meetings were scheduled. Sasaki wanted a fair and level playing field, so every meeting thus far has been held at Wasserman's office in Los Angeles and every team was given the same two-hour time limit for its presentation. Sasaki asked that current MLB players not be involved in the meetings. He also gave every team that was granted an in-person meeting a "homework assignment," Wolfe said, meant to show how they can analyze and communicate information.
Wolfe said he believes the next step will be narrowing the field, although that is up to Sasaki. He also said he doesn't anticipate Sasaki signing right away on Jan. 15, the day he is first eligible.
The Los Angeles Dodgers have long been considered the favorite to land Sasaki, but Wolfe has twice met with reporters to try and make it clear that his client is open-minded. He said Monday that Sasaki does not seem swayed one way or another by whether a team already has Japanese stars. His main focus is finding a team that can help with his development as a pitcher.
The Giants are hopeful they're that team, and president of baseball operations Buster Posey has been open about his desire to add the right-hander, who has a triple-digit fastball and a long track record of dominance in Japan even at such a young age.
"I was watching some of his highlights and it's kind of next-level, mind-blowing type of stuff with the fastball and then the split off of that. Those are the two (pitches) that really stood out in my mind. He's a great one," Posey said on the Giants Talk Podcast two weeks ago. "(The situation is) very unique and it's a credit to him as a player, too, right? His willingness to come over when he's coming, he's giving up a lot of money. He could have waited a couple of more years and been really primed up, so I think it just shows his willingness to just go ahead and put his stamp on the big leagues."
