Notes: Sasaki pursuit, ABS testing in spring, Cyr retires
Yesterday at 10:33 AM
More details on how LA and its stars helped recruit Sasaki to the Dodgers, plus other weekend news and notes.
Some Dodgers news and notes for a Sunday morning.
Jack Harris at the Los Angeles Times earlier this week dove deep into the Dodgers pursuit of Roki Sasaki, including a dinner with Sasaki, Shohei Ohtani, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto in December, before a meeting with more stars two weeks ago at co-owner Peter Guber's house.
From Harris:
"Shohei and Yoshi were very helpful, very influential, very involved with him on a personal level," said the person with knowledge of the Dodgers' recruitment.
Major League Baseball plans to test an automatic-ball-strike system during spring training games in Arizona and Florida this year, using the challenge system that has been used for a few years in Triple-A. Evan Drellich has details at The Athletic, including that more than 60 percent of spring games will feature the system.
The Dodgers will have 17 games, though the full list wasn't specified. The Dodgers have only 20 Cactus League games in their truncated Arizona spring schedule before opening the season in Tokyo.
Perhaps you saw pictures of Dodgers pitcher Anthony Banda celebrating in the postseason while wearing a clown mask in the clubhouse. Frank Rojas at the Los Angeles Times wrote about how the "cholo clown" has become the face of Los Angeles.
Tyler Cyr pitched in two games for the Dodgers in 2023, totaling 1⅔ scoreless innings, but spent most of the season on the injured list with a right shoulder impingement.
The right-hander on Friday announced his retirement from baseball, writes Darragh McDonald of MLB Trade Rumors.
Drafted by the Giants in the 10th round in 2015, Cyr pitched professionally for nine seasons, and saw time in the majors in 2022-23 with the Phillies, A's, and Dodgers, totaling 18 strikeouts in 15 innings with a 2.40 ERA.
