The rest of the baseball world might have always thought the Dodgers were getting Roki Sasaki. But as the team recruited the 23-year-old pitcher in recent weeks, front-office officials insist they were never certain.
Not until Shohei Ohtani, the fellow Japanese star who was teammates with Sasaki in the World Baseball Classic, broke the news to executives that Sasaki decided on the Dodgers.
“Shohei beat the agent to the punch,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said with a laugh. “It was just pure excitement.”
Read more: Plaschke: Invincible? After historic offseason, the Dodgers sure seem like it
That excitement ratcheted up Wednesday, with the Dodgers welcoming Sasaki in a news conference at Dodger Stadium. And it will only continue to build over the next two months, as the hard-throwing right-hander prepares for a highly anticipated rookie season.
Here are five things that were learned at his introductory news conference.
The ‘homework assignment’
When Sasaki held his initial round of in-person meetings with teams last month, he tasked each with a “homework assignment,” as his agent, Joel Wolfe of Wasserman Media Group, described it.
After his velocity slightly dipped in Japan last season, Sasaki wanted club officials to identify what they believed was off in his delivery. And, more important, he wanted to know how they planned to rectify it.
“It was a terrific idea,” Wolfe said of the assignment, one of several ways he said his client “drove the bus” of his free-agency process. “I thought that the teams also loved the idea, because the specifics of the homework assignment gave the teams, number one, a very clear idea of what he wanted to hear … And he was asking, ‘What can you do to help me? And what do you think has gone wrong while I was in Japan? And how would you go about working with me and developing me?’ And that was a big part of his decision-making process.”
As for what Sasaki took away from the exercise?
“Because there was going to be limited time for me to be able to understand the differences between many teams,” he said through interpreter Will Ireton, “I just felt like this homework assignment was a really good opportunity for me to be able to find out how the teams think.”
When the Dodgers learned of the assignment, Friedman said, “we felt like it was right in our wheelhouse.”
“Our ability to showcase our performance science group, our training staff, our performance staff, our pitching coaches, how connected those groups are, we felt like really highlighted a strength of ours,” Friedman said. “It was more about how things would work going forward, if he were to be a Dodger, that we spent the most time with.”
Cy Young expectations
As Wolfe said multiple times throughout Sasaki’s free agency, the pitcher does not consider himself a “finished product” — not after pitching fewer than 400 innings in his Japanese career and making the jump to the majors at such a young age.
“He’s not in the position that [Yoshinobu] Yamamoto was when he came over,” Wolfe said, contrasting Sasaki with his other star client on the Dodgers who signed last year with nearly 900 innings in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league.
Read more: Hernández: Why did Roki Sasaki sign with the Dodgers? Health not wealth drove his decision
“[Sasaki] has a lot of growth and learning to do,” Wolfe added.
On Wednesday, much more attention was on his tantalizing potential. Friedman called the pitcher “one of the most electrifying and promising talents in the game.” General manager Brandon Gomes drew a parallel to last year’s National League rookie of the year, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Paul Skenes.
“It’s definitely Cy Young caliber,” Gomes said. “And to continue to do what he’s done in Japan, at this age, and have the ability and room to get better is really exciting and impressive.”
Picking a third pitch
Sasaki should arrive with a top-notch fastball, if he can correct last year’s velocity dip, which had the pitch sitting around 96 to 97 mph, and consistently register triple-digit speeds.
He almost certainly will find success with his trademark splitter too, a pitch he believed impressed Dodgers evaluators most. But Sasaki’s effectiveness could depend on his third pitch, an improving slider that has taken several forms over the years — from a slower bender with big spin and break to a slightly firmer version that acts more like a cutter.
Developing that pitch figures to be one of the main tasks in spring training. And on Wednesday, Gomes began to lay out how the club will work with Sasaki to come up with a solution.
“I think he’s messing around with a few different versions, and that’s something as we get in, we want to kind of hear his thoughts and get him with our group to understand, like, ‘Hey, what is the goal here?’” Gomes said. “We have some ideas, but the most important thing is kind of hearing how he’s feeling about it and kind of where the progression has gone, and where he wants it to go … Once we get to the point where we feel confident about an adjustment that he also believes in, we feel like he’ll be able to pick it up and run with it.”
Roki’s runners-up
While the Dodgers were celebrating, the regret of missing out on Sasaki still was lingering in San Diego and Toronto, the runners-up in the Sasaki sweepstakes.
Sasaki picked those teams as his other finalists after deliberating over his initial round of team meetings during a holiday trip back to Japan.
“When he was in Japan, trying to make a decision of what his next steps would be, he was trying to decide what was the best way to make a good decision,” Wolfe said. “And Roki decided that the best way was to go visit fewer teams, but spend more time in those cities … go spend several days in each spot and experience the city, experience the team, see what a normal work day might feel like, because he’s never been here.”
Wolfe praised the pitches by both San Diego and Toronto, calling Sasaki’s decision a “coin flip.”
“I had the opportunity to speak to a lot of teams, and they had a lot of appealing features,” Sasaki said. “But overall, when I looked at the general consensus, I thought that the Dodgers were at the top.”
The Dodgers’ Japanese advantage
Wednesday’s news conference opened with a statement from Dodgers president Stan Kasten, who noted that with Ohtani, Yamamoto and Sasaki all on the horizon in recent years, the Dodgers saw “opportunities” to plant their flag as a premier destination for Japanese talent.
Wolfe, who represents numerous other Japanese stars, said Sasaki entered the process with an open mind about all the teams that pursued him, but acknowledged that the Dodgers have developed a “home-field advantage in Japan” thanks to the star power of Japanese talent on their team.
Read more: Shaikin: Dodgers president Stan Kasten defends team’s spending: ‘This is really good for baseball’
Wolfe noted that since the arrival of Ohtani and Yamamoto, Dodgers games are broadcast live every morning in the Japan (because of the time difference), then rerun in prime time each night. He said Japanese teams have Dodgers memorabilia lining the team shops of their stadiums. And as a result, he believes “all the players and fans see the Dodgers every day, so it’s always in their mind, because of Ohtani and Yamamoto.”
It’s the exact effect the Dodgers were trying to create when they first began pursuing their trio of Japanese stars. And now they’re hoping it leads to a dynasty on the field and ever-growing business and marketing opportunities off it.
“We set on a course to take advantage of whatever opportunities we could find over these next few years,” Kasten said.
Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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