TORONTO — Prized Japanese right-hander Roki Sasaki was recently in Toronto for a visit with the Blue Jays, according to The Athletic.
The report Monday morning emerged after attendees at Baseball Canada’s annual awards banquet — hosted at the hotel connected to Rogers Centre — told Sportsnet they saw a player fitting Sasaki’s description working out on the field.
One video shown to Sportsnet, shot from a distance, featured a pitcher throwing on flat ground with what one baseball person described as a “Japanese-style delivery,” surrounded by Blue Jays officials and staff.
Others who witnessed the session — the hotel attached to the dome includes rooms and a restaurant that overlooks the field — thought the pitcher matched up with Sasaki.
The pitcher’s delivery also looked identical to that of Sasaki.
The 23-year-old right-hander is arguably the most coveted free agent of the off-season, accessible to all teams because he’s subject to the international bonus pool, which caps his acquisition cost.
During the winter meetings his agent, Joel Wolfe, revealed that Sasaki had been posted by his Japanese club, Chiba Lotte, and intended to sign during the international signing period that opens Wednesday.
Wolfe said at the time he planned to host in-person meetings with clubs at his agency’s Los Angeles offices before the holidays and then progress to in-person visits if Sasaki felt they were needed.
A visit to Toronto would suggest Sasaki sees the Blue Jays as a viable suitor, though executives from other teams continue to view the Padres and Dodgers as favourites.
Still, whichever team lands Sasaki will gain a potential frontline arm on a minor-league contract, so teams have been working hard to get the right-hander’s attention, with so many video submissions coming in that Wolfe said “It was like the Roki film festival.”
The Blue Jays have an international bonus pool of $6,261,600 for this signing period, between the Dodgers and Giants on the low end of $5.146 million and the high end of $7.555 million for eight clubs. Additional bonus pool room can be acquired in trade once the signing period opens, but under the collective bargaining agreement, teams can acquire no more than 60 per cent of their original allotment, and space can be dealt in increments of $250,000 unless a club is trading its entire pool.
Had Sasaki waited until he was 25 to come over, he would have been exempt from the signing bonus pool as Yoshinobu Yamamoto was last off-season, when he signed a $325-million, 12-year deal with the Dodgers.
For that reason, factors beyond money will tip the scales, and the Blue Jays had been quietly preparing for the possibility of his posting for at least the past couple of years. GM Ross Atkins visited Japan two summers ago to watch both him and Yamamoto pitch.
