Craig Breslow confirms Red Sox have not met with Roki Sasaki
"I don’t know that there’s any finality to that."
Red Sox fans hoping for a Roki Sasaki Boston jersey under the Christmas tree are due for some disappointment.
Even though the 23-year-old Japanese phenom pitcher has already started meeting with MLB teams since getting posted by his NPB team, the Chiba Lotte Marines, earlier this month, Craig Breslow confirmed to The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier that Boston has yet to have a sit down with Sasaki and his camp.
“Right now, we do not [have a meeting scheduled]. But, I don’t know that there’s any finality to that,” Breslow told 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.”
Even though MLB teams on the West Coast like the Dodgers and Padres have been viewed as the favorites to sign Sasaki, MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo noted that Boston was expected to make a push for the young righty’s services.
“In the AL, the Red Sox are very serious about making a pitch to the Sasaki team,” Mayo wrote. “The main selling point might be the history of Japanese pitchers having success and positive experiences playing in Boston: Daisuke Matsuzaka, Uehara and Junichi Tazawa.
“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 went 10-5 with a 2.35 ERA last season in Japan, striking out 129 while walking 32 over 111 innings of work. Over his four seasons in NPB, Sasaki is 29-15 with a 2.10 ERA and 505 strikeouts over 394.2 innings.
Beyond Sasaki’s age and impressive stats in Japan, the young ace is viewed as a top offseason target because of his cheap price tag.
Because Sasaki is an “international amateur” rather than an unrestricted free agent, whichever team eventually signs him has to ink him to a cheaper, minor-league deal — rather than something akin to the 12-year, $325 million deal that then-25-year-old righty Yoshinobu Yamamoto signed with the Dodgers last offseason.
“According to reports and comments from team officials of various 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 righthander,” Speier wrote.
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