M's are in on Roki Sasaki

[Donn Beach]

Sure, beautiful city with a large japanese influence, great pitchers park, an organization known for their pitching development, why would he want to play there

[Pharmabro]

https://www.mlb.com/news/roki-sasaki-sc ... e746df6de9

A head scout called him a one with 3 plus power pitches. He has great stuff.

Last year our starters had 2 SPs in the 120s ERA+, Gilbert had a 113, and Kirby and Castillo were just over 100 ERA+. If Roki is an "Ace", Adding to the top of the rotation puts us in a better playoff-winning position.

Look at the video. It has a great overlay of his 4-seam FB vs his splitter. Awesome Sauce!

[bpj]

They're probably in on this guy as much as they were in on Matt Olson and Freddie Freeman when they had Ty France at 1B.

Or all the shortstops when they already had JP Crawford.

The position's filled, why would they re-fill it?

They don't care about upgrades when a position isn't vacant imo.

[Pharmabro]

Having a six man instead of trading one of them for a bat would be a complete waste and wouldn't upgrade the team in least.

I disagree. If you are getting a young Ace, that makes your club a lot better. If they went to a 6-man to keep him healthy and on his schedule the other 4 could leap-frog him and stay on a 5-man pace. So, Roki would get 1/6 the starts for 27 starts. The other four would get 33.75 starts each. And you could still trade one SP for an area of need.

[Pharmabro]

The Roki acquisition would allow you to trade one of your SPs. I have circled back to the Luis Castillo for Matt Olson deal. Olson has a value of about 6M on the trade calc vs. -30M for Luis.

Atlanta lost 2/5 of their SP rotation in Ace Mac Freid, and Charlie Morton. But they also lost their catcher Travis D. Arnaud.

So, the Braves need their catcher of the future and (Ford 22.1M) fits a need for them as soon as late in 2025 or maybe 2026.
Package to Braves = Catcher Ford AA, Castillo and 5M$. The reasoning here is the Braves would get both short and medium turn budget relief. Luis has 3 years X 24M + vesting option vs Olson's 5X22M + option.

Does that work for you guys.

[Donn Beach]

They're probably in on this guy as much as they were in on Matt Olson and Freddie Freeman when they had Ty France at 1B.

Or all the shortstops when they already had JP Crawford.

The position's filled, why would they re-fill it?

They don't care about upgrades when a position isn't vacant imo.

He wouldn't cost them anything, course they are in on him

[bpj]

They're probably in on this guy as much as they were in on Matt Olson and Freddie Freeman when they had Ty France at 1B.

Or all the shortstops when they already had JP Crawford.

The position's filled, why would they re-fill it?

They don't care about upgrades when a position isn't vacant imo.

He wouldn't cost them anything, course they are in on him

Not even a $20M posting fee?

[Donn Beach]

Think it be less than $20 mil, I don't understand why they are posting him

Under the current rules, the release fee Chiba Lotte can get would be 20 percent of the total guaranteed value of the contract Sasaki signs. For contracts with a total guaranteed value of $25 million or less, the release fee will be 20 percent of the total guaranteed value of the contract. We know that Sasaki's contract will fall under that $25 million threshold because …

[Donn Beach]

I guess the dodgers have the largest bonus pool available. Mariners must be further down the list. So the dodgers end up the favorite anyway

Dodgers: $2,502,500
Orioles: $2,147,300
Yankees: $1,487,200
Giants: $1,247,500
Red Sox: $990,000

[Donn Beach]

Per Adam Jude of the Seattle Times, the Mariners are preparing a recruitment pitch for Japanese pitching phenom Roki Sasaki once he is officially posted