Roki Sasaki's uber specific homework to MLB teams revealed
Today at 09:55 PM
When news broke that Roki Sasaki, the most exciting international prospect to bring his talents to the MLB since Shohei Ohtani, was giving teams homework before he picked his eventual landing spot with the Los Angeles Dodgers, fans, pundits, and talent evaluators alike knew this wasn’t going to be a typical free agency period.
But did Sasaki want to know about the franchises? What did the organizations bring to the table for Sasaki and his team? And most importantly of all, what was this homework?
Well, fans don’t have to wait any longer to find out, as in an expansive breakdown of his free agency quest, Alden Gonzalez of ESPN revealed what Sasaki asked of his potential teams and why that shows a very different kind of 23-year-old pitching prospect.
“Leading up to his first round of meetings last month, Sasaki provided his suitors — believed to be at least eight teams — with what he called a homework assignment. All of them had the same task: To diagnose why his fastball velocity dropped last season in Japan and to outline their plan to ensure it never happens again,” Gonzalez wrote. “To those who have tracked him, it said a lot about the 23-year-old phenom — that he’s confident but also self-aware. That he’s a long-term thinker. And that though he recognizes he can get better, he’s h*ll-bent on being great.”
Goodness, that is very interesting indeed, especially since there isn’t a simple, one-word answer to the question. But how did the executives around the MLB feel about the entire ordeal? While surely the team who won Sasaki’s services, in the end, would consider this homework time well spent, as he is a potential rotational rookie pitcher right out of the gates with sky-high potential, how did the other teams feel about it? Well, Gonzalez asked a front office executive and got a very interesting answer regarding why teams are so high on Sasaki.
“He seems very solution-based, analytical in a forward-momentum way.” a front office executive told ESPN. “A lot of guys are deep thinkers and tinkerers and don’t give a s**t about progress. They just give a s— about what fixes me right now. Sometimes, in order to fix yourself for the long haul, you need to take a step back and do an internal audit of what went right, what didn’t, and how to close that gap. He seems to have a high degree of accountability of what standards he has for himself.”
Will Sasaki ultimately live up to his potential? Will he eventually settle into an ace role for the Dodgers and even earn a contract worth even more than his fellow countryman and reported pitchman Yoshinobu Yamamoto? Only time will tell, but if this is his mindset as a rookie, imagine how much better he will become as the season and his career progress, especially considering he possesses a 100 mph fastball and a splitter for the ages.
The post Roki Sasaki’s uber specific homework to MLB teams revealed appeared first on ClutchPoints.
