Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2243: Roki of the Year

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen banter about how to abbreviate Twins executive Derek Falvey’s new dual role as president of both baseball and business operations, then (5:23) discuss Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki from a scouting perspective, touching on how good he could be, how a team could ease him into MLB, what […]

Let's play ball. It's effectively wild. It's effectively wild. It's effectively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2243 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fan Graphs. Hello, Meg. Hello.

Also with us is your colleague, Eric Langenhagen, also of Fan Graphs, lead prospect analyst, et cetera. Eric, welcome back, it's been so long. Thank you, this is the sound of my voice. I have to tell Meg, my phlebotomist today said to say hi to you. All right. Ben, you weren't mentioned, I don't know why.

Huh, all right, snubbed by the phlebotomist. That's okay, I'll get over it. It's been sort of a slow news week in baseball except for one big bit of news. And so we're gonna devote essentially this entire episode to that news, which is that Roki Sasaki is coming. He's coming stateside. He is being posted by his NPP team, the Chiba Lote Marines. And so we're going to talk to Eric about the scouting and signing aspects of that later in the episode. We're going

to be joined by NPP journalist Jim Allen to talk about the implications for the Marines and for Japanese baseball in general and why it was that this posting actually went down. But first, Meg, one very brief bit of news that broke just before we started recording that I got to get your thoughts on. You know how we talked last time about whether there should be different terms for a president of baseball operations and a president of business operations. I just combined them into baseball. So that's an option. But we decided that the baseball ops president

takes precedence that the baseball operations president is the Pobo and the president of business operations just doesn't get a title essentially. Well, now our resolve is going to be tested because there's been a twins front office overhaul. So Thad Levine left already earlier this off season as their GM. Now their current club president, Dave St. Peter is moving into a strategic advisor role. And so that domino is knocking down some other dominoes or I guess propping up some dominoes because Derek Falvey, who is the current Pobo,

president of baseball operations, he is also becoming the president of business operations. He's gonna be both. And Jeremy Zoll is gonna be general manager, which probably means that Falvey will take a step back on the baseball upside somewhat, but still retains the ultimate authority there. So he's still Pobo. So what do we call someone who is president of both baseball and business operations simultaneously?

The Jo-Bo. The Jo-Bo. The joint business. Joint Jo-Pobo? We've got the double rainbow. This is the double Pobo. Joe, Joe Pobo. Eric, you have any ideas? I think Bizball is approaching- President of Bizball?

Where you want to go. I don't know if that's exactly, it needs to be workshopped, but I do think like Bizball, something in there, ballness. Yeah. Yeah. Biz ball, biz. I would want to sandwich two of those together, I feel like. Yeah, I wonder what his business card will say. Will it say president of baseball and business operations,

or will it be like listed on separate lines? I know for sure it won't fit in anyone's wallet. Maybe it'll say, this is too much job for one person. Do you think they on separate lines? I know for sure it won't fit in anyone's wallet. Maybe it'll say this is too much job for one person. Do you think they could say that? That seems like too many jobs. That seems like at least one too many jobs. Meg's never played the show, so she's never altered hot dog prices and also traded for Jose Ramirez.

Make the hot dogs free. Yeah, it's true at lower levels, you know, your lower level minor league affiliates, Indie Balls, that's basically standard, your baseball ops and business ops, but not at this level. That sounds like a lot of work. Yeah. That sounds like to be both of those things, those are semi specialized skill sets. I'm sure he'll be delegating plenty, but still that's a lot to have on your plate.

Right. If he's going to delegate a lot anyway, why have it be one job then? You know what I mean? Just like keep it distinct jobs, keep it not a Joe-bo, Joe-bo. I don't know, maybe just for the title, maybe. Cause we talked about the Minesians

and their potential to be po-bros if they both get promoted from brother GMs to brother po-bos. So yeah, now we have whatever this is. So like a Pee Babo. I don't know what to call this. All right, we'll workshop it. We're accepting suggestions for now.

It's either President of Bizball, Double Pobo. I think President of Bizball is like really great and also superior to any of the other options that we have presented, including Jobo, in that it like actually tells you something about the job, right? Like it is descriptive in a way that all of this nonsense is just, it's just letters jumbled together and salad, you know, that's not good. Well, we've settled that or at least begun to deliberate on it. And now we can turn our attention to Roki Sasaki. So instead of Eric B and Rakim, we have Eric L and Roki. Pause for applause and laughter.

Something, pause for something. Okay, we've a little more time. Most of the young fellas think, find that era of rap to be corny now. Like I have put on early 90s rap in front of like young people, athletes, and like my little cousins or their kids. And they think it's corny. They're not into it at all. They will not, you know, they think tribe is corny. Don't appreciate the pioneers.

I understand, you know, at a certain point, stuff that was influential when you don't, when you aren't around to experience it initially, it becomes hack in retrospect. CB Yeah, right. Because other things build on that foundation and then the foundation sounds sort of simplistic and you don't realize that everything that came after that came because of the thing that went before it. So you have to appreciate it in the context of its time. Don't know what Roki Sasaki thinks about rap, but he is of the age group maybe that might think that Eric B and Ruki are corny because he is just 23 years old. In fact, he turned 23 this week,

I believe, or no, last week. Sorry, he's not that young. He turned 23 last Sunday. And now he is about to be available not to the highest bidder necessarily, but to just about any bidder in theory. And Eric, you have provided an update on scouting Roki Sasaki. I wrote about him too this weekend. And so very curious for your thoughts on how he projects and then probably we'll also get into the process of signing him and bonus pools and how this is all dependent on the timing of his posting, et cetera. But for those who don't know, why is everyone so excited about Roki Sasaki? 2. Yeah, Roki Sasaki has been an enormous deal for, I guess guess going on six years at this point.

This was a player who folks around baseball knew about and were very excited about when he was a junior in high school. The top of the typical draft class in NPB or in KBO includes pitch ability lefties who like sit 91. Like guys like that tend to go very high, whether they're high school or college draft picks in the MPB draft. Roki Sasaki was like, touch him 102 in high school. He was like, you know, had some God-like individual performances.

He like threw nearly 500 pitches over the course of about a week during you know the big high school tournament in Japan. He threw like a 200 pitch complete game and like homered a couple times in that game like you know like some extra inning game that he was the all the offense end you know was like a monster. This is how it has been for Roki Sasaki basically, where he has either been hurt or mostly looked like this, where he's sitting in the upper nineties. He's got one of the nastier splitters on planet earth and, you know, he'd been a dominant NPB starter from basically the jump, you know, what would have been, he

was 2019 draft picks or what would have been his first season was wiped out because of the pandemic. It altered some of the calculus for him, like satisfying free agency requirements and being exempt from international bonus pools, like maybe a year later. But yeah, other than the times that he has been hurt, which has, you know, been a thing a couple of times since he's turned pro. He's been amazing. This year, there was a dip in his stuff.

He had an oblique tear last year. He came back at the very end of 23 and looked fine. And then instead of him sitting 99 this year, he sat like 97. There are other aspects of his fastball that cause it to play down. You know, even though he's sitting in the upper 90s, he does not have like a hugely dominant fastball. There are issues with its shape and movement that make it more hittable, but he's unbelievable. He's still so, so young. He is very special athlete and talent who at some point during the next, you know, five to 10 years, regardless of what's going on with him physically, injury wise, he's very,

very probably going to have peaks where he is, you know, an obvious front end starter where he's, you know, a number one or a number two on a really good team. Whether or not he satisfies the workload, checks the workload box in a profound way, the way Zach Wheeler does or whatever, we're just gonna have to wait and see how healthy he's gonna stay and be and whether or not he's gonna be able to do that.

But there are lots of examples of pictures like this across baseball. Tyler Glass now has been hurt plenty like he'd still really, really want that guy. And so I feel like this is that's the situation we're in here where, you know, when I weighed Roki versus Yoshi Yamamoto last offseason, when it was like, all right, like right up all the best pros in Asia again. You know, I had Yamamoto like a full grade ahead of Roki just because of durability, consistency, deeper pitch mix, better fastball playability.

Like I liked Yamamoto more last year, but you know, when you could make an argument for either of those guys, I think you still can. I would be very, very excited, you know, if my team signs Roki Suzuki, I'm excited that he's coming over and that we're going to get to see his prime in its entirety on our shores. It's interesting that he is coming over now. We've talked about this in the past that like from a financial incentive perspective, both for him and the team, it seemed like we might have to wait, right? Because he will be subject to amateur bonus pool caps, which means he won't sign a deal like Yamamoto's, just to make reference to that from last off season. So help our

listeners understand the timing of this, both the decision, so the decision to post him sometime this off season and what it would mean for him to be posted say today versus on January 16th. The way international bonus pool restrictions work is the calendar runs from January 15th of a given year through December 15th of a given year. Each team gets a bonus pool. It's tailored by market size, how bad you were the prior year. You can trade for more bonus space in increments of like a quarter million bucks, but you can only acquire up to half of your original pool. That's still a lot when you're starting with a $6-$7 million pool.

Three million bucks extra is one more top of the market player, like a bunch of mid-six figures guys. That's a pretty big deal. The timing, obviously Yamamoto signed a $320 million deal or whatever last off season as essentially a true free agent. Because Sasaki is not old enough nor does he have the requisite professional experience to meet those requirements, he is subject to these international amateur bonus pools that 16 and 17-year-old Venez you know, Bahamian and Dominican kids

Are are subject to and like those younger guys make up a bulk of the market You know every year Cubans or whatever like come over but for the most part it is very very rare for anyone to Willfully subject themselves to this earning limitation It wasn't always this way. Obviously Shohei Otani signed for a little over $2 million in 2017. The rule changes were in effect just before that. Yeah, it was 2016, I think. Right.

I think it was Luis Robert who signed for $25 or so million right before they changed. You kind of get an idea of what a top of the market player would sign for with basically no real professional experience. Luis Robert played on the Cuban national team and stuff like that, but the White Sox paid him 26 million and then paid a dollar for dollar tax, essentially outlaid over $50 million for a player with not a lot of

experience anywhere, really risky thing to do. Obviously, Luis Roberts like that talented. And so maybe that's what, you know, obviously pitching is like a much easier thing to evaluate in a vacuum than what a Cuban hitter is going to do against spigly pitching. So you know, Roky would probably get much more than that. But this is, you know, this is good for ownership. The ownership groups where this is what they wanted, like they didn't want to pay. They want to pay a 23 year old 100 plus million dollars.

They want to pay him three. And so now they get to because of changes to that CBA, you know, going on a decade ago. But the calendar, the counterpart of this is important because I guess it might be important. I think it'll be important for the narrative because maybe more so than where Sasaki ends up signing. Because look, we're at the end of the 2024 calendar. We have a month left. So most teams have already spent most or all

of their 2024 international amateur bonus pool. They spent it in January. They spent it on teenage Dominican players and Venezuelan prospects. And it's gone. I wrote in August about who has space left, i.e. like who may be planned for this slash knew it was about to happen or wanted to leave money available in the 2024 signing period to make a run at Sasaki, assuming that he'd be posted during

the first early part here of this off season. And in August, when I sourced this stuff and did journalism, the Dodgers had the most left at two and a half million. The Orioles have a little over two million. And then you start getting into a cluster of teams that are in like the one to one and a half million dollar area, the Yankees, the Giants, the Bo Sox, the Tigers, the White Sox. You know, I checked on those clubs amounts again,

like over the weekend and they're all the same. Those teams can of course continue to trade for space. The Orioles initial pool was bigger than the Dodgers and so they can actually trade for enough space to outspend the Dodgers. Based on my calculations I have like the Orioles at like 4.2 million as like their max tradable amount. You know, their pool in totality would be at 4.2 when they trade for all that. Where the Dodgers are at like 3.5, so are the Giants, so are the Tigers.

But you know, when you're the guy who comes over now and knows that you're only going to get a couple million rather than a hundred million dollars a couple years from now, you might not care about money enough that any of that matters, that the Dodgers can offer you three and a half and the Yankees can only offer you like two. And so that's the difference for you? Like, no.

So, and that's the sentiment I've gotten from, again, like as I was texting around the industry over the weekend, the senses that like Sasaki's people have said to teams, hey, like this is not a foregone thing. Make your pitch. Even you, you know, the Minnesota twins who have $20,000 left in your bonus pool. Actually it's $17,500 for the twins. Because all of this stuff is objective, right?

Like this, and this is the other thing. Because we're in the 2024 international amateur calendar year, and teams have spent and agreed to deals, everyone knows how much everyone else has left objectively for the 2024 calendar year. Were Sasaki to be posted later such that he would sign after January 15th during the 2025 international signing period?

We don't really know how much money everyone has. We know that there are verbal handshake deals that teams have made with lots of players already, a lot of them. And most teams have a lot, a big, big chunk of their 2025 bonus pools verbally committed already. But we're not as sure about like everyone's amount and teams also break those agreements all the time. It's not great to do and teams know that. And so're not like doing it willy-nilly constantly every team every year or anything like that, but every year there are a handful of players who at one

point were like gonna get two million or whatever and then they agreed to that deal while they were 14. They progressed or regressed physically between ages 14 and 16 when they're about to sign. And the teams go, ah, we'll give you 600k now. How about that? And, you know, they break or change agreements like that all the time. And obviously with the specter of Sasaki looming, the teams are more likely to do that. I have had, you know, I had an international director. This was back in August. And as I started working on this, tell me like, Hey dude, all bets are off for this

guy. Like, you know, teams, whatever that doesn't matter. Teams will give them their whole bonus pool in 2025, no matter what kind of commitments they might have. And so again, at this point, you know, I could sit and read you, I've got a bunch of notes on multi-million dollar dollar this and that. Guys, the Mets have committed to players through 2027, two and three million dollar guys, and theoretically would not have enough pool space in 2025 to compete were that the thing that's

going to be Sasaki's main driver. But it doesn't seem like that even matters. Again, does this guy care about money? He's going to have all kinds of other income streams probably. And so like, does it really matter to him? It might not. So obviously if things tip into 2025, it would seem like the markets would be more legitimately robust in terms of the number of teams that would actually have enough money

to make a reasonable offer to this guy, it will probably come at the expense of breaking other commitments with other players, probably. And guess what? Like we're all going to find out about it because Roki Sasaki is involved in this. And you know, it's not just Sebastian Walcott who you're breaking a deal with someone to sign. It's this guy. And so, yeah, we all will for sure find out and know about it. It is going to be messier if it pushes into 2025. The optics of it are probably going to be worse. I don't know that anyone cares about any of that anymore given the state of other stuff. Like do whatever you want. Right? Like, what's it going to stop you from being president? If you don't sign the

Venezuelan kid you agreed to deal with for 3 million? Like, no, it's not. CB I could stop you from becoming president of Bisba operations potentially. But yeah, maybe, maybe Falvy can do something about that 17,500 now that the twins have at their disposal, but Ron Blum of the AP did publish the complete list of remaining bonus pools as of October 21st. And that matches what you said, essentially the Dodgers were at the top, like two and a half million Orioles at 2.15 and then 1.5 Yankees. And it's a big step down all the way to Tampa Bay and Texas at $0. Now the posting deadline, I believe,

is December 15th, right? So he has to be posted by then, but the posting window is as long as 45 days. So if it drags on, if they wait till the posting deadline to post him, then that window will still be open into the 2025 international signing period. And then those pools turnover. And I've seen some reports or rumors that the Dodgers actually have a small pool for 2025, seemingly, but I don't know really how to, no one knows where he's gonna go. Of course, we're all reading tea leaves as we did with Otani and we still don't exactly know

why Otani chose the angels and he himself has just said it was kind of a gut feeling, he just felt like it. So I think there could be a surprise. Certainly there's been some reporting about how actually maybe he would like a softer spotlight in a smaller market. And everyone of course assumes, oh, the Dodgers will be in the running because they have this rich history of Japanese players. They have two huge Japanese superstars now. They have a huge fan base in Japan. They have a good player development track record. They just won the World Series, etc. etc.

You can get endorsement dollars if you want them in LA. There's a long list of reasons why you might want to sign with the Dodgers. Then again, maybe he wouldn't want to share the spotlight with two other Japanese megastars whom he played with on Samurai Japan. Or maybe he would want a smaller market or maybe he would want to help take a team to the top instead of joining a team that's already at the pinnacle of the sport or maybe he'd be wary of the Dodgers track record with pitcher injuries. Who knows? It could just come down to who has the best PowerPoint presentation or video montage, right? But everyone in theory will want to pitch unless they are ruled out by his agent, which I think

he's represented by Wasserman. So if he goes about it like Otani did, where they kind of narrowed it down to some finalists and then they met with those teams, maybe it'll be a similar sort of process, but it could very well come down to how good a pitch you make. So there's no telling. It could come down to the bonus pools or that might be almost a non-factor. It might be. And when I worked on who has 2025 money left, the way I approached it was I just knew that like getting specific amounts was, you know, a fool's errand. And so I just asked my contacts, like, who has the most, who has a lot of money left as far as you know? Really it's an absence of information that might create that, like, in anyone's internal system.

If the Phillies have a deal with someone, but your team doesn't know they do, it will look in your internal system as though they have, like, a lot of uncommitted money for 2025. But if I talk to someone with the Brewers, they might know about that deal and they might see like that the Phillies don't have a lot of money left for 2025. The guardians were always, every single time, were mentioned as having a lot of 2025 money left. Baltimore, Philly, Pittsburgh, Texas, those were the ones that were often mentioned as having a lot. And then Boston Cubs, Royals, A's, Mariners, Blue Jays, once in a while, they were mentioned as having, you know, among the most, but not as consistently as those other five clubs.

So you might say like the Orioles, because they've got money in both periods. You know, if you're going to be an odds maker here, like I would elevate them like the Orioles, because they've got money in both periods. You know, if you're gonna be an odds maker here, like I would elevate them, not to necessarily to the very tippy top, but like somewhere in there. Also like, Rogi Sasaki, the person, like there's some interesting stuff here too. I mean, this poor guy had members of his family die

in like a tsunami created by an earthquake when he was a kid. Obviously all of the attention being, you know, just like imagine what it's like to be LeBron James in high school, except during like in the social media era, basically. Like this guy had that. I don't know. It doesn't sound like things with Chiba Lotte and him have always been great. There were reports last off season that he wanted to be posted and they wouldn't allow it. Back when he was drafted in 2019,

the way the MPB draft works is like you nominate the player that you wanna take first. And if other teams nominate him too, then it like goes to a lottery system. This was not someone who was universally nominated and there are rumors that it was because, like there are some teams, I think Yomiuri Giants are one of them.

I think there was probably one or two others who like Otani had like an agreement in place when he first signed, hey, when I say I wanna go, you have to let me go. That's part of this and like has to be part of this if you nominate me to be chosen. And so there were teams who did not nominate Sasaki to be their first pick. And seemingly because there were teams who just do not do this, they have a no early posting type of policy.

There might have been like a predetermined, hey, when I say I go, like I get to go. So even though posting Sasaki at this time, like makes no financial sense for him really and definitely not for the Marines who are going to get, you know, a portion of when Otani signed the Nippon Hokkaido, you know, fighters, they got a flat $25 million posting fee, I'm pretty sure. But the rules have even changed again since then, where it's just a portion of the bonus. So someone will get like a fraction of four or six million or whatever it's going to end up being. We'll get into that in a little more detail later with Jim, but there's just so much that fascinates me about Sasaki just

because yeah, he has this incredibly tragic, sympathetic origin story about losing family members in the 2011 tsunami and having to be uprooted because of that, lost his father and his grandparents. And he also has a sweet nickname, which is always a plus when you're interested in getting people psyched for someone. So he's the monster of the Reiwa era, which is the current era in Japan calendar wise. This is sort of inspired by Daisuke Matsuzaka. So he's got that. He's got all the great pitches. He's got the ridiculous stats. And I was writing about him and getting hyped about him a couple of years ago when he was still 20 because of course he caught everyone's eye pre-WBC when he had almost back-to-back perfect

games. And he threw a perfect game with 19 strikeouts, which tied an MPB record and then struck out 13 consecutive batters, which is basically a global record in a major league at least. And then came back out the next time and followed it up with eight more perfect innings. And no, he didn't blow the perfect game in the ninth, he just got removed before the ninth for workload concerns. So he may well have finished it off if he had gotten the chance. so he may well have finished it off if he had gotten the chance. And basically, relative to the league, he was peak Pedro at that point, that season, 2023, or like de Gram, essentially. Some of the same kind of concerns about durability, he's had fatigue issues, problems bouncing back from starts. And so I wonder how you would handle him if you're an MLB team, if you're slotting him into a

rotation, I guess that's another reason why people kind of connect the dots and say Dodgers, because they're already planning on a six pitcher rotation. But I wonder like how you use him, because he very much fits into the modern pitching trends of, you know, we're focusing more on your inning pruning effectiveness than whether you're an innings eater. And he's never really shown the capacity to do that. And he's been, you know, taken decent care of, even though he's like pitched at a young age, he throws so hard, his teams are conscious of that. He did have a, a Koshin tournament span where he threw a ton of pitches, but also he controversially didn't start in a finals game or,

or multiple games in that tournament, which the coach was criticized for at the time, but evidently had analyzed him and found that he had low bone density. This was several years ago. And so the coach was, yeah, it was, was wary about pitching him too much. And he is built like a cartoon vampire. He does have a Count Chocula type of thing going on. He's so narrow and he is like-

Yeah, he's pretty slight. He's six foot two listed at least, so he's taller than Yamamoto, but he's pretty wiry, I guess. He's pretty spindly. So he hasn't been like that prototypical power pitchers build and so you kind of worry about that as you do with virtually any pitcher who throws that hard, I guess.

So I wonder, like given all the difference in the ball, the difference in the schedule, the difference in the culture, everything that comes along with that on top of his youth and his lack of durability to this point. Like how do you ease him into this environment? Yeah, it's a great question. I think you just do it. Like you, you do ease him in. I don't think that I would like, you know, take the reins off immediately and just have this guy

go every fifth day as if he were Zach Wheeler or, you know, even Paul Skeens, like, you know, I think it would be an advantage to start with a six man rotation and limit what his innings look like. This is a guy coming off an oblique tear and then elbow issues this year who has had a bunch of health stuff.

But also like, as far as investing in him, it doesn't matter. He's just going to get a couple of million bucks. And so like, he could only have one foot and it'd be fine. But yeah, I think it should be slow going and conservative. Initially, he's a guy who you want to be peeking at the end when you're theoretically competing for like a postseason spot. And then in the playoffs, that's when I think you unleash this guy to his fullest. And there have been, you know, I think from a stuff standpoint, if we're just like comparing

Sasaki's stuff to big league pitchers that we know about. Kevin Gossman and Nathan Ivaldi, Ivaldi himself, like a ton of health stuff early in his career, right? Those are pretty good comparisons, I think, especially Ivaldi and like things worked out over time for him. I think a lot of the Japanese teams are, I don't know this for sure, but like tech integration and physical development seem, tech integration definitely like they are at an MLB level. In terms of like physical development and like health, strength and conditioning, physical development and like health, strength and conditioning.

It's more of a mixed bag. The athletes in NPB across the board, you know, on average are like, not in the kind of physical condition or as like explosive or athletic on average is what we watch over here. And I don't know how much of that is just like the player pool is smaller. You know, it's like so many, uh, you know, Japanese people and not like, you're not taking the best athletes from all over the world in quite the same way that Major League Baseball is. But yeah, maybe there's some headway to be made in that area when he comes over here

that will help him stay healthy. Right. But I would definitely, like, be conservative with him initially. There's just so much stuff, and like, this guy's gotta move over here, and, you know, honestly, if anything, if I'm Roki Sasaki, like, I wanna get this over with

so I can start my life not in... I don't wanna agree to a deal with someone in mid to late January, and then only then find out like a couple of weeks before spring training starts where I'm living, you know, what my life is going to be like. I like when all that stuff handled. So maybe that'll help. You know, this guy can be working out at the complex all winter if he signs up before December 15th. Yeah. And I guess he can lean on the advice of his former teammates and WBC teammates. And he's been linked, of course, to the Padres because of Hugh Darvish, who's been a mentor to

him and AJ Preller, who's probably made 15 trips to see him, I would guess. But there's been kind of a constant pobo pilgrimage over there to see him in person, which is, I would imagine, as much about signaling your interest in the event that he gets posted as it is about the in-person scouting looks, though I'm sure it's a bit of both. But it's a really interesting contrast at the top of the market now because you have Juan Soto who's probably going to make 600 million bucks and then you have Roki Sasaki who's probably going to make 600 million bucks. And then you have Roki Sasaki, who's probably going to make about 600 million less than that.

He's going to probably make about 600,000 next year. I know the weak minimum is slightly higher than that, but not that much more. And so I guess if you were talking in terms of just 2025 impact, maybe you would take a Corbin Burns or someone over Sasaki. But given that you're getting Sasaki at bargain basement prices for several years, I think he probably becomes the second most appealing free agent surplus value wise. And so you have this contrast between a guy who might sign the biggest contract ever in terms of present value and a guy you can get for league minimum. And theoretically, everyone can be in the running, even the teams that typically don't really dive into the deep end

of the free agent spending pool. So does add a lot of intrigue because if you kind of narrow down the list of realistic Soto suitors to several big market clubs and everyone else kind of rules themselves out of the running often with Sasaki, who knows, right? Anyone's got a shot, at least if they are ruled out, it won't be because they can't afford it. Right. Yeah. If we assume that based on Sasaki's behavior, that the money part of this is not as big

a deal, then really I do think most teams have some kind of shot. The thing that will be interesting then is when he agrees in principle and a team wants to trade for as much bonus space as they possibly can to give him the biggest deal they possibly can, when it comes time for them to trade for that bonus space, how hard do the other teams twist their arm? You almost have to try to do it without anyone knowing that that's what you're trying to do. Or else, I'd be bloodletting whoever is about to sign him for whatever prospects I could, or who knows what you could try to get from them. But whatever prospects I could or who knows what you could try to get from them. But that will be a very interesting sidecar to the story when he does agree to sign somewhere

because I would like to think whoever signs him wants to give him as much as they possibly can, which would involve trading for some amount of space. And yeah, if I were a team that lost out, you know, if I'm, if let's say he does wait till 25, because the Padres don't have any money, right? Like they signed Leo DeVries. They signed Leo DeVries in January. He's playing in the folly. He looks good. He homered last night. It's awesome. If, you know, if he's going to sign with the Padres, it's going to have to be in 2025. They have at least one multimillion dollar agreement that I know about for 2025. And so would have to, you know, trade for space theoretically to outpace some of these

other teams, Cleveland or whatever it is. And I would be like, Hey, like, you don't have a lot of prospects in your system necessarily, but give me braided net, give me whatever. I would absolutely be planning for that if I were a rival team to like be twisting the arm. Some of these other teams that have pool space left, it's there like the White Sox, it's there to trade to whoever signs this guy for more prospects, not to sign him.

I'd be like laying in wait, doing work on that, trying to be the one that like it's to be the remora of this deal and you know, scoop up some prospects or assets, you know, comp pick whatever it is to whoever needs to trade for pool space for this fella. You end up having this like gross secondary effect potentially where it's like not only are there going to be teams that I think as you're saying are smartly going to say, okay, well, you want this dude, you need my pool space, here it is. But to your point on the international, the existing international handshake deals, like how much vulturing is there going to be as teams try to say to, you know, young guys who might be in this bucket of prospects on the international amateur side, who would be viewed as

jettisonable in the event that he signs in the 2025 period. Like we might see some of that too, where teams are like, well, they're going after Sasaki. They're not going to have room for you. So I have a little room to come over here. Like, oh yeah, it's good. Well, you know, I mean, I guess if it gets the kid paid that that's less of a laugh. But like, you know, that's the thing we brush up against this space where it's like, there's not a lot of great going on here. Right. You know, and these, these things were done so that Leo DeVries wouldn't get 15 million, 20 million, you know what I mean? So, but yeah, whenever a player goes back to the market,

one of the biggest issues and saddest things is that often it is happening where there's not money left in the marketplace really. It's happening not long before signing day when these guys get cut loose and most of the money from the, you know, a given period has been committed already. In this case, the secondary market will probably be more robust just because there have been teams saving money for this purpose specifically.

There was a time during the summer, Sasaki had gotten hurt at this point and was like shut down when the Dodgers signed like a Taiwanese outfielder. And that was when the whole like, will this guy come over or not with Sasaki, like some of the questioning, you know, the actually Bob Nightingale says it's not likely he's coming over this offseason, right? Like, we had Chelsea Janes early on be like, hey, it seems like this is gonna happen. And then we had Bob Nightingale go like, actually, no, it's not.

And then Kylie was like, yeah, it's gonna. And people were like, ah, Kylie reported it. Should any of us corroborate it? Uh, and then like, it took a week before anybody else was like, uh-huh. But yeah, like, pools are deep right now. You know, um, there are some players out there. There's, there's a Japanese high schooler who skipped the MPB draft and, um, there are

like online rumors that he has a deal with Oakland. I haven't been able to substantiate that, but there are, there are probably a bunch of players who are waiting to see what happens. And if Saki signs, or if he ends up getting pushed to the 2025 period, there's going to be a frenzy of activity between now and December 15th for whatever Cuban players have defected and hit the market the last little bit, or there will be a flurry of deals. And then yeah, like 2025, there was nothing really to suggest. The only thing that was interesting was the Orioles having money both for this year and next left. But other than that, there was not really any strange

behavior. There's not like anything about next year's bonus pool. The discussions I've had with people that would indicate like everyone has just not spent any money. Like, no, it seems like his business as usual. Um, and so, yeah, someone might get borked, but it seems like it would be better for those young players who, whose deals get squashed. Uh, there should be more money floating around this time because of the Sasaki impact than usual. The market for them should be better than normal. But it is a weird like

bad thing. I've known players who had $2 million deals who ended up getting like $600k. You know? Like there are definitely times when you're working on this market and you go, huh, this team, it's a huge market team. Okay? This team is going to have one of the lowest pools because they did really well and are a huge market team. And so how is it they can have already committed $7 million worth of bonuses to these guys

that like people are telling me they've done that. And it's because they know they're gonna cut somebody. Yeah. They know that they're gonna do it. Or they are, you know, this was a problem. There was a moratorium on trading for pool space at one point during like lockout. Right. Right.

I think it was during lockout. Maybe it was COVID related. Some of that is garbled to me now, but there was a window within the last couple of years where there was a moratorium put on trading for pool space and teams that had committed pool space they thought they were going to trade for had to like triage players. Yeah. And then like that wasn't their fault because they were just planning on trading for space that they suddenly could not.

But yeah, like there are all kinds of things like this that happen where teams over commit to whatever their base initial pool is going to be. And sometimes even more so than, you know, have over committed beyond what they can trade for, knowing that whichever of these guys, they don't like buy now-ish, they've told, hey, our deal is void. I guess Nightingale reporting that Sasaki will not be posted is almost a second confirmation that he will be, but we didn't necessarily know that

at the time. I meant to mention, in addition to everything else that makes this such a fantastic deal for the team that ends up signing Sasaki, JJ Cooper at Baseball America noted that you could also get a draft pick out of the deal, right? Because if you promote Sasaki and he finishes high end awards voting, if he's rookie of the year, then you get a draft pick that the value of that would outweigh what pittance you're going to be spending on him in your

bonus pools. Right? So there's just a little extra sweetener for you, not that anyone needs one. And also, I meant to mention when we were talking about easing him in, that's what the Marines did in 2020. He was just so young, they didn't even promote him to the majors in Japan that year. He had been the first overall draft pick in 2019. And then in 2020, they just basically had him throw bullpen sessions and

batting practice and simulated games. And then he threw 60 something innings the next year. So they really ramped him up pretty conservatively. Although at this point, he's of an age where you would want to see him rack up some higher innings totals. So in our next segment, Jim is going to give us kind of the devil's advocate perspective on his slight decline in performance this past season, relative to 2022 and 2023, basically the idea that maybe he was experimenting with things.

He was working on a sweeper. Maybe he was taking something off the fastball intentionally. And that could potentially explain some of the downturn there. And if you look at my article, which I will link to, I had all the Delta graphs advanced stats in there, all the peripherals, all the plate discipline stats that showed that, yeah, performance wise, he was not quite the same guy this past year, though still quite good, even after you adjust for the fact that it's basically the year of the pitcher, the dead ball era over there in Japan right now. But my last question for you is, do you think he needs to do anything differently other than be more durable?

Easier said than done. But in terms of his repertoire, refining his arsenal, I've seen suggestions, yes, maybe work on his command, but also like maybe he needs to add a splinker or something like some sort of skeins-esque evolution. Or do you think the guy we saw in 22 and 23, he could just step in and dominate day one and doesn't need to do anything I mean ideally this guy would have a us another breaking ball something else that's moving toward his glove side, I guess just like in terms of diversifying the directionality of your pitches He's this is a fastball splitter guy

Mostly it was like 50% fastball splitter guy mostly. It was like 50% fastball usage, like 30-35% splitters the last two years. And then a slider usage in 2024 was up from 14% to 22%. You know, the velocity was down across the board. I was like working with an 87- 88 mile per hour slider in 2023. It was more like 83 to 85 in 2024. So, you know, having a breaking ball that's in that velocity band, more like modern day gyro, slider, sweeper velocities.

Would I like you to have a cutter that's like in the upper 80s or something like that? Yeah. Yeah, but you know He's 23 He's been utterly dominant his entire life His splitter is the real deal. It is it's an 80 grade pitch like it is elite You know you mentioned earlier Ben the changes the differences in the Japanese baseball compared to major league baseballs the changes, the differences in the Japanese baseball compared to major league baseballs. That is a thing that I more worry about when we're talking about a pitcher

who's like breaking ball heavy. When it's a splitter, it's just like, okay, it's probably gonna be about the same. So there might be, you know, Lance Brosdowski has done a bunch of Roki Sasaki work. He's excellent. Folks should check out his stuff if they haven't already. He is more of the pitch design

guru certainly than me. I just think like, you know, if you're looking at his repertoire, would I like there to be like a cutter or something else? Like some other breaking ball? Yeah, but there's so much time to do that. It is not a thing I would worry about initially. There are teams, you know, like the Dodgers, the Dodgers player, deaf people mentioned to me that like early intervention is a thing they think, uh, is one of their core competencies.

And, uh, maybe a team like that would proactively be like, yo, uh, welcome to Camelback Ranch. We're going to give you a cutter today. Um, but for the most part, like let this guy get acclimated to the States, be gentle with him, let him stay healthy, please. Uh, this is a multi-year long-term thing. This is a 23 year old who you want to be healthy

and impactful for the next six, 10 years. And so I would, you know, be reticent to make any sort of overhauls to what this guy's been doing. He's just been great since he's 16, 17 years old. And I would let it breathe like that for a while. Well, I am just now belatedly lamenting the fact that I did not use the debut single of Eric B and Rakim. Eric B is president to segue from our discussion of po-bos to my joke about Eric B and Rakim. Sometimes you think of these things 45 minutes too late, but at least I got it in here now.

And you, Eric, have paid us in full on this segment. Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge as always. You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me on. And we will be right back with even more Roki Sasaki discussion, Jim Allen, who has covered Japanese baseball for a few decades at this point. Yeah, let's leave it at that. I won't specify the exact year. Actually, I might later in this segment

because it could become relevant, but he's been a journalist covering Japanese baseball for quite a while, let's say, and he continues to cover it and to be an excellent source for those of us who do not read Japanese and rely largely on English language coverage. Jim, you have stayed up to an unreasonable hour to speak to us. Thank you for that and welcome.

Oh, well, thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure. Well, since you are our man on the ground, I'd be interested in what you can tell us about the reaction to the news that yes, in fact, Roki Sasaki is being posted by the Chiba Lotte Marines. What have fans said? What have media members said? What have the team executives said? Give us a sense of how this is going over. Oh my gosh.

First of all was shock and disbelief because it made no earthly sense on the surface for the Lotte Marines to make their best player available to MLB two years before they could get any return on their investment. Fans blamed the Marines for being stupid. Actually, the most interesting response has been former Marines general manager in the Hall of Fame manager, Tatsuro Hirooka, saying the Marines should have gotten rid of him earlier because he's a whiner and a complainer and he's always hurt and they're better off without him. That's a hot take. Yeah, that was a bit of a surprise even to me,

but this last year and a half when talk of Roki Sasaki being in the majors has coincided with his inability to stay in the rotation, a lot of of former players have come out with their knives sharpened saying basically he lacks guts, he doesn't have what it takes to be a real professional player and he's selfish and you name it and they're calling him it. What about fans of the Marines and of NPV in general? Are they sad to see him go? Are they excited to see him potentially prove himself in MLB? Both.

Yeah, both. If you're a Marines fan, it was a dark day. They have tremendous fan base, but for them to lose their best player when he's 23 years old, he had basically, he's been a pro for five years, but he didn't play it all his first year. He's got less, I would guess he has less than three years service time. So they've got maybe six, maybe seven years of team control and they're letting them go for nothing.

It's almost like some of the fans think that they're being stabbed in the back by the team. The reason the team gave for letting him go was, well, he wanted to go and we respect his wishes. And, oh, sure, he only, you know, he won 10 games for the first time this year and he pitched a hundred and not he hasn't qualified for an eRA title but you know he's worked a lot for us so we we want to you know to help him fulfill his dreams but nobody's buying it nobody's buying it but the funny thing is that the media in Japan works differently and the teams are a source of news and the media route depends on them for access. So the mainstream media, nobody is coming out and saying the obvious, which is that the Marines are posting Roki Sasaki, not because they are do-gooders and the humanitarians,

but because they have do-gooders and humanitarians, but because they have no choice. I wanted to ask about that because, you know, there has been a lot of discussion stateside about the likelihood of him coming over. And just from a pure, as you noted, dollars and cents perspective, the incentives are hugely on the side of them

retaining Sasaki for as long as they can so that they can optimize the posting fee that they would eventually receive, which will be a pittance now. Even if they wait for sort of the international pool money to roll over and more is available, it's not going to be anything like what they would have received if he had just been an age unrestricted free agent and not subject to amateur bonus pool restrictions here. So what is the thinking about the genuine real reason that they allowed him to go, that

they are, you know, looking to post him this year? The obvious reason is that Japanese contracts are not analogous to MLB contracts. Right. Okay, MLB, the contracts are scrutinized by the commissioner's office and the players association and anything that doesn't pass muster gets scrubbed out. In Japan, the commissioner's office does its due diligence, the union does its due diligence, and there's a checkbox on the contract. And if the box is checked, it means there's an additional agreement between the team and the player that nobody sees. Teams can have these extra contracts with players, particularly players with some kind of leverage. Import players who are coming from the US or Latin America will get contracts that say he's new in Japan, but he's not going to be subject to the free agent rules. You have to let him go after X number of years if you don't

sign an option or something. So they can specify when the player can become a free agent. They can specify when the team would be required to post him. They can do all kinds of these contracts, can have anything in them. The team would agree to that because Japan's draft has no compensation picks for teams that fail to sign the guys they got the signing rights to. So if the Marines in the autumn of 2019 had been unable to sign Sasaki, he would have gone off to play in MLB or waited, sat out a year and signed with another team, and they would have been left holding the bag. and they would have been left holding the bag. So apparently Sasaki had some very powerful,

I'm guessing he had some more powerful advisors than most 18 year olds do. And they held the Marines feet to the fire and told them you have to let him go whenever he asks. And the team has outright denied that this is the case, right? That's correct. Yeah. It's not as if they've just danced around the question or not been asked, right?

No. They have said there is no such agreement. Now, is there not potential for the actual contract language to surface at some point for something to be leaked and embarrassed the team? They know for sure that there's no way that if such an agreement exists, that they might not be exposed and embarrassed. Well, the problem is that it would embarrass everybody. My guess is the only people who have seen this contract are Roki Sasaki, his attorneys, and the team and the team's attorneys. And the attorneys will be bound by their legal responsibilities. And the team does not want this to be public

and Sasaki does not want this to be public. Last winter, there was briefly some buzz about him requesting to be posted at least, which turned out to be just all smoke or a false alarm. He did, I don't know, hold out is maybe an exaggeration, but he signed late to return to the team. Does that argue in favor of there not being such a clause in the sense that if there was one and he could just decide when he wanted to go, he could have just

triggered that last year instead, or might he just not have pushed as hard then? Or maybe just whatever agreement was tied to some achievement that he had not gotten by then? What should we make of the fact that this was sort of the second time that there had been a lot of rumor about this? Right. Well, he signed, my memory is not serving me, three or four days before the start of spring training. There were rumors he wanted to be posted last year, but of course by the time he signed his contract, that was impossible.

The free aid, the posting window had passed, but I don't take much stock in those because MLB teams had not been, they had been telling me that they expected him to be available in 2024 at the end of the 2024 season. The 2023 was completely new to me. So I think that was more of a, that was more of a rumor than anything. And people were basing it on something that he wanted to go I don't know but anyway, so the the the holdout was interesting because of what wasn't said when he signed they pretended Everything was normal. There are players who do hold out for more money or for something But for them to say no no, no the reason they gave for the holdout was that this year we negotiated with his attorneys and his agent. And then when they asked, well, what was

unusual this year? Well, nothing was unusual. We negotiate with his agent every year. And so nothing added up. And we learned, as we learned the other day on Saturday in Chiba, that the press room at Chiba Marine Stadium is large enough to hold both a large media contingent and an elephant that nobody notices. I'm curious, you know, Sasaki, when he was coming out of high school, when he was entering the draft, he was already, you know, a phenomenon in Japan. And so on the one hand, if this contract clause exists and you've convinced me that it does, it doesn't seem like the sort of thing that every potential NPB draftee could insist upon. He was in sort of a unique position because of his profile

coming out of school. But I am curious sort of what the general sense is of what these early postings potentially contract-induced postings mean for the league going forward, because you're right that I'm sure fans of the Marines are very upset, but I think every fan of NPB has caused to be upset and concerned because you don't want your best players to leave the league any earlier than is strictly necessary via the posting system. So what do you think this sort of portends for NPB going forward? Yeah. And to be clear, I guess that's the reason for the dissembling here, right? If anyone is wondering, well, why, why about this? It's because they don't want to set that precedent and encourage other

amateurs to try to get such a clause in their contracts, right? It's not only that, but Japanese baseball is weird in the sense that many things are known by the media, but talking about them is considered taboo. Right. For example, after a win, the head coach of a team will take an envelope of cash and start handing out money to leading players in the game. This is something that has never been reported in the media. It's just something every reporter knows and nobody talks about.

And these contracts exist, I know because I've seen, I saw one player's contract and I know that they do exist. And I've heard from team executives who told me that they do cause trouble because nobody knows about them and they specify Cash bonuses to players that would saddle other teams with huge debts So there there are all kinds of issues with them Nobody wants to talk about them. I would bet Quite a lot not my not my my apartment or anything

But I would bet quite a lot that Shohei Ohtani had a similar agreement. Now, it was said that the team had allowed him to go, but it was not specified when. And Masahiro Tanaka would be another case because the Rock 10 Eagles in 2014 went from expecting perhaps $100 million and a posting fee to 20 in a matter of days. And they said, well, we agreed to send him. Right. So this applies to people like Masahiro Tanaka and Yu Darvish and Shohei Otani and Roki Sasaki and a few others, but not to most players. But

to get to the answer to the question, what does NPB do going forward? I think they have to address this, but that's the problem because they don't want to talk about it. First thing they need to do is have compensation picks in the draft so that teams will not feel they have no options but to succumb to pressure because this is going to become more and more of a thing. Second, they need to agree with the union on some limits to these side contracts. Now that's going to be really hard because they want to deal with the union like you want to, you know, live next door to somebody who's up all night and, you know, has contagious diseases. It's really not something they want to do, but they might have to.

And the union might see that it's in their advantage too, to have some sort of transparency. The union is fairly big on transparency and the owners are not. Well, this is why I alluded to how long you've been covering the league. I believe Jim Allen's guide to Japanese baseball was published in 1994, right?

Oh, yeah, the yellow one, yes. Which I mentioned because that was the year before the Dodgers signed to Deo Nomo. So the league and the posting system, there was no posting system. The player movement from NPV to MLB has completely transformed and opened up during your time covering Japanese baseball. So I wonder when you started, did you ever dream that there would be much movement back and forth that we would see so many stars from Japan go on to star in the States? Well I did actually because when I started researching Japanese baseball about close to 40 years ago, I discovered there was a kind of social Darwinism where people in MLB and people in Japan believed

that because the levels of the leagues were different, the levels of all the players were shifted. The best players in Japan couldn't compete against the best players in America because Japan's quality was lower. It was a very kind of a 19th century viewpoint. I saw that and I said, it's ridiculous because what's really different is, you know, the individuals, some of the Japanese players, you could watch them and you could see this guy could compete anywhere. So what happened was two things, was in 1993 the owners granted free agency to the players. They gave it to them.

And not out of the goodness of their hearts, but in order to, for the most powerful team in Japan to secure the most talented big name stars from other teams. The person who was in charge of that told me how 15-20 years ago that there was no way in hell they would have done that if they thought any Japanese player was good enough to play in MLB and Hideo No Mo ruined that. So once that happened it became clear that eventually players were going to start moving. Hideki Irabu was a great case. I mean, he had absolutely no right to go to MLB, according to the rules, but he went. And so they had to change the rules because people are going to work where they want to work.

And there was very, eventually it was going to end up in court. Yorabu's case came very close to ending up in the US court system, illegal system, when he went to the Padres before he was traded to the Yankees. So that was going to happen and it eventually did happen and it eventually has become routinized and Sosaki is another step in that. Yeah, and has it gotten to the point where it poses a threat to the health of the game in Japan? Because just a year ago, we talked so much about how the free agent market was really enlivened by Asian stars. Otherwise, it would have been a weak market. You had Otani, you had Yamamoto, you had Imanaga, you had Jung-Hoo Lee from Korea, you had Yuki Matsui, et cetera, and now you have Sasaki.

Is there a point at which it starts to threaten the integrity of the competition there or when Japanese fans go from following the Dodgers from afar and rooting for former NPP players who are now on the Dodgers to saying, hey Dodgers, please stop poaching our players because we actually want to watch them for a while because you certainly wouldn't want to end up with a system where it starts to seem like just a feeder for MLB. I'm not saying that we're there yet,

but is there danger that we could get there? There is a danger we could get there. And the aforementioned manager, Mr. Hirooka, came out and shouted at the clouds and said, Japanese professional baseball is not a stepping stone to MLB when so obviously it is. The movement of stars to MLB has had a really interesting effect. And that has been to motivate kids playing baseball in Japan to be bigger and better. It's amazing how these guys in MLB have been beacons

for kids to break out of the boxes that Japanese baseball wants to put them in. And Otani is a great example because he was a player who when he graduated from when he was a senior in high school there was essentially zero chance that he would ever be a two-way player. If he had gone to MLB he would have been a pitcher. If he had not said he was going to MLB he would have been a pitcher in Japan. No Japanese team would have ever ever ever given him a chance to do both. They wouldn't have been able to stand the criticism until they had no choice. They only did it to

keep him in Japan and that opened the door. So people see that and the kids see that and there's two way players are, well, we're not seeing them in Japanese pro baseball because it's still against the code. There is one guy, but he hasn't been very good. But the kids are highly motivated. They have access to the internet and good information. Coaches are more and more in Japan interested in what the players want and less interested in saying you have to be, you know, as they did with Ichiro Suzuki, you have to be this kind of player.

We don't want you hitting home runs. We want you to be a pinch runner and so on. So it's been, it's been a factor in, in creating these, you know, these kinds of monsters, you know, these, these super talented kids who are inquisitive and athletic and they're imbued with the work ethic that is comes with growing up in Japanese baseball. up in Japanese baseball. They are non-stop devoted practices, but with a purpose. And so Japan, I think the level of Japanese talent is just shooting through the roof right now. So that's a good side, but if it's uncontrolled, if it's every player can be Roki Sasaki, yeah, that's a problem. and they do need to fix that.

The ultimate goal for the owners in Japan is to decide, hey if we put our house in order and we increase, improve our development and we reduce our limits on import players, we could have baseball here that's as good as MLB and then we don't have to worry about everybody wanting to play in MLB and it'll be the other way around. We'll be trying to, you know, we'll have American players who want to play in Japan because it's different. Yeah, I wanted to ask if there are other, you know, it sounds like ownership might have a strong incentive here to sort of revamp the way that these contracts are structured or the possibility for these early opt-outs,

which is always a tricky thing for us because I want baseball in Japan to be healthy and thriving, but I also want players to be able to play where they want to play, right? So there's this tension that exists there. But I wonder if there are other sort of structural changes either to the posting system itself or, as you mentioned, sort of the limits on foreign-born players playing in NPB that the league might contemplate to sort of make sure that the skills stay relatively balanced between NPB and other international leagues they have to compete with talent-wise.

I think they want to. The biggest obstacle is the business model. And the business model in Japan is that the teams try to make a profit, but if they don't, they don't worry about it because the parent, the goal, the parent companies invest in baseball because they can get a huge amount of brand familiarity and PR and publicity from having their company's name in the media virtually 365 days a year. And this completely outweighs the cost, the operating losses, and then factor in their tax write-offs. So it's like free advertising. So most of the owners basically are saying,

we got what we paid for. Who cares about being good? We're profiting as it is. But there are owners, particularly Masayoshi Son, who owns, who's one of the richest people in the world, who owns the Softbank Hawks. He has, since he bought the team in 2005, aspired to have the best team in the world. But you can't do that in a system

in which you can't have the best team in the world if you've got 11 competitors who are happy to be playing the Pacific Coast League teams. And you said that ownership would prefer not to have to negotiate or talk to the Players Association. Sure. But there has been some news on that front or some reports that maybe the Players Association was considering using some antitrust mechanisms to extract certain concessions. If not a work stoppage, there were reports that the MLBPA was advising the Japanese players union, right? So is there anything on the horizon that might lead to either a work stoppage, which there hasn't been one for quite a while, right? There's not a lot of

precedent for that or some other sort of soft power exercise that might lead to changes to the system. Work stoppage. No, we haven't had a strike. Well, Japan's only a strike, only strike occurred 20 years ago. Uh, and that was over contraction, but it was a huge boost for the game here. So it was very much like MLB where the work stoppage, uh, you know, leading to free agency on, you know, was a Pandora's box full of lots of goodies actually for the owners.

And Japan too, the game is really vital right now. But as far as the free agency goes, yes, I have heard that reported in the States. I haven't talked to the people that were referenced to that, but they have, I've heard it is an anti-monopoly issue and we did get a drop in the bucket in that area where the MLB had to scrap one of its rules because it ran afoul of anti-monopoly laws and they just said, okay, we're done, we're good. So I wonder if that was a sort of a collateral damage of the union's larger goal. But yeah, if that happens, if the owners are forced to reduce free agency, and they're forced to actually negotiate with the players, that would be a golden opportunity for

them to, you know, get some things that they want, such as limiting these con, you know, these side contracts or doing some other things. And before we let you go and get some rest, I am curious about your take on how Sasaki will fare, what you make of his dip in performance and his unavailability during the 2024 season? Should that be worrisome? Are you expecting more of a bounce back to the stuff in the stats of 2022 and 2023? And then also, a lot of people are presuming that Rokey to the Dodgers is a done deal. You have pumped the brakes and said perhaps not. So any thoughts you have on his outlook as a pitcher and also where he might end up pitching? Let's start with the destination.

I can only say somebody who is working with him. I've been in contact with somebody who's working with Sasaki and I can only say is that the people around him are not all saying you have to go to the Dodgers. I have no clue what Sasaki thinks. Japan's media since COVID has been... We're still on a kind of a draconian footing with players for most teams. They have kept us at arm's length since COVID. They've realized they're happy without reporters having unfettered access to their players. So I don't really know. I've never even been able to speak to him. But as far as his performance, I actually thought 2024 was a pretty good year for

him. And the reason I think so is because he developed a sweeper and he really mastered it. It was a really good pitch for him. His fastball is fast but it's not in my opinion it's not all that good. It's effective because it's fast but it's flat and if his splitter comes back if he improves the command of his splitter or some MLB team teaches him to keep his hand on top of the ball the way because he throws he has a similar arm angle to it's it's it is pretty vertical more vertical than a show team anagas but he doesn't keep his hand on top of the ball very well and so it tends to spin arm he has a lot of arm side run and if he learns to have more hop on his fastball or and and or learns to control his command his splitter better then he

will be incredible the sweeper was a big addition. His splitter can probably bounce back. The fastball was interesting because I believe there was a program for him to dial it down this year. His manager has a master's degree in physical education and coaching and is very, very injury prevention oriented. and is very, very injury prevention oriented. And so I think that he said something to me in March about high school players coming out of high school being too strong for their joints. So I think that was a thing. So I think he was learning to pitch at lower velocity was one thing. Learning how and when to dial it up, mastered the sweeper. So, I think it was a huge growing year for him. Actually, I don't see it as a dip at all. HOFFMAN Well, that's exciting. I look forward to seeing him in action wherever he ends up. And we appreciate your invaluable perspective as always, and also your willingness to burn

the midnight oil to talk to us here. Literally. Yes. Literally, yes. I mean, you probably weren't actually burning oil, but it was midnight. Correct. No, I think my homeowners association would have a tiff if I started burning oil. Well, you can read Jim's coverage at jballallen.com and also on Twitter at jballallen and you

can hear him talking about Japanese baseball on the aptly named Japan Baseball Weekly podcast, which we recommend. Thank you as always for your time and your information. Oh, thank you for having me on. It's always a joy. All right, that will almost but not quite do it for today. Late breaking submission for an abbreviation for Derek Falvey's new dual role with the twins, listener and writer Matt Trueblood says that Falvey is now a po-bobo.

That's not bad. President of baseball operations and business operations. We can leave the A for A out. Pobobo. It's a contender. Also, Jim messaged me after we recorded, and he noted, I never answered your question about this year's Sasaki holdout. I believe it was to sort out this year's posting, that is prior to the most recent NPB season, with the team's lawyers trying to poke holes in the language of the agreement that allowed Sasaki to leave when he pleased. And I want to leave you with a little bonus segment here that I think you'll enjoy. As some of you know, I have been one of the regular panelists on Slate's sports podcast, Hang Up and Listen, which comes out weekly every Monday. So if you want to hear me talk about some non-baseball sports at some length, you can do so there. And Hang Up historically has had an episode

ending segment called Afterballs, which can be just any old tangent, something that strikes one of the panelists fancy. It's often some sort of rabbit hole or deep dive. Maybe medium dive, it's usually not more than 10 minutes. It was my turn to do one this week, and I did one that was inspired by Effectively Wild, both the previous episode and a listener and Patreon supporter. And I thought, should I make this an afterball or potentially a stat blast on Effectively Wild? Well, why not both? It will be the first ever dual afterball slash stat blast. An after blast in honor of Derek Falvey and his multiple titles.

This will also be a two-way player of podcast segments. So I'll just play it here as it appeared on Hang Up after our stat blast ditty. And the first voice you will hear belongs to Alex Kirschner, hang up host, split zone duo host, and Effect effectively wild listener who teed up my afterball, as you'll be able to infer we discussed Roki Sasaki on that episode too. Ben, it is once again time for after balls. While it will be great fun to watch Roki Sasaki pitch in Major League Baseball, it is also going to be an incredible joy to get this week's baseball themed after ball. Ben, what is your Alejandro Diaz posting of the week?

Well thanks for asking Alex. I am channeling the spirit of Stefan Fatsis by going full word nerd today. The New York Times Tech Guild, which represents more than 600 software engineers, product managers, data analysts, and designers, is on strike and has asked subscribers to refrain from playing games such as Wordle, Connections, and The Crossword. The Guild has built its own website with similar games to tide people over, give them a fix, which you can find by googling Guild Builds. But it's been easy for me to avoid crossing the digital picket line, because I've somehow avoided an addiction to New York Times games. However, my wife is a wordler and a spelling beer and a crossword puzzler, so she's had

to sacrifice some streaks in solidarity, and thus it's been a while since I've seen her working on a crossword. But based on the number of times she's come to me for help with sports related clues in the past, I have long suspected that baseball is overrepresented in crosswords relative to the sport's current level of popularity. This past January, I had athletics all-star slugger Brent Rooker on my baseball podcast, Effectively Wild. I knew he was a crossword guy, so I asked him if he had noticed baseball clues coming

up unexpectedly often. Do you think baseball is overrepresented in crossword puzzles compared to other sports or compared to its popularity? I don't think so. I mean, a couple of days ago, one of the answers was San Antonio Spurs. So you got the NBA there. NFL is in there a lot days ago there was a one of the one of the answer was San Antonio Spurs So you got the NBA there? NFL is in there a lot. I feel like six or was also an answer recently which was another NBA reference last week Niner was one being this the 49ers reference. I think it's pretty between the three

major American league NHL maybe is a little less represented, but I think between NBA, NFL, and MLB, I think it's pretty even. I remember being very jealous during the playoffs. Alec Baum, who I know in a play with, was the answer to a, I don't remember who the second one was, but he was in the New York Times one, which I was very jealous of and thought that was kind of cool. So Rooker kind of shut me down and made me question whether the crosswords baseball infatuation was real or whether it just seemed that way to me, maybe because my wife was more likely to ask me, an ostensible baseball expert,

about the baseball clues. But I am pleased to report that the data bears out the baseball bias. Recently, ineffectively wild listener Raymond Chen took it upon himself to study this question by cataloging every sports clue in a 2022 book called the New York Times Amazing Big Book of Crosswords, which contains 300 puzzles of various difficulty levels. He made a spreadsheet, which we will link to on the show page, and in his summary of the results, he began with a beautiful sentence, Ben is right. He continued, baseball really is overrepresented. In the 300 puzzles, there were 436 forts-related clues. Of those,

166, or well over a third, are baseball-related. This is more than two and a half times the total of the next closest sport, football, at 65. Golf, basketball, and tennis fill out the top five. I'll note that hockey ranked sixth with 16 mentioned, so Rooker was right about crosswords snubbing that sport. Other sports that got on the board, boxing, soccer, skating, badminton, horse racing, bowling, fencing, plus one clue about baseball's antecedent cricket, which was cricketers need answer bat.

Baseball's representation in crossword clues is consistent across all difficulty levels, whereas other sports' fortunes rise and fall, possibly due to small samples. Among the top five sports, golf relies most on knowing the names of players, teams, or venues as opposed to other terms. Tennis is highly dependent on player name recognition alone. If you remove the most overrepresented answers, such as T in golf, APE in fencing, OR in hockey, and AT in baseball, then baseball's percentage shoots up to almost 40% of all sports clues. Hockey fades further and fencing all but disappears.

So Raymond concludes, the results confirm Ben's theory that baseball really is the dominant sport in crosswords. Take that Brent Rooker. But why is baseball such a disproportionate star? I asked Ben Zimmer, the linguist, lexicographer, and co-host of the former Slate podcast Spectacular Vernacular, who noted that the worst baseball crosswordese is widely acknowledged to be A-eller and N-eller, as in American Liger and National Liger, though fortunately those rarely appear in the New York Times or elsewhere these days. Ben pointed me to a 2015 Times article in which longtime Times crossword editor Will Schwartz acknowledged that aeolr and enelr are not much used in the outside world, but the letter patterns

are so useful for crossword constructors, it's hard to say no. And yes, there was an aeolr and an enelrs in Raymond's sample. Short terms like that play a part in baseball's crossword puzzle appeal, which became clear when I reached out to Shorts, who edited the puzzles in Raymond's book. "'Interesting question,' he said. "'Crosswords simply include names that average people know. "'And for whatever reason,

"'there seem to be more well-known baseball players "'than there are well-known athletes in other sports. "'Also, the shorter the name and the more vowels it has, "'the more likely it is to show up "'in an American-style crossword. "'That's part of the name and the more vowels it has, the more likely it is to show up in an American style crossword. That's part of the reason for the high frequency of Leo DeRosier, Lou Gehrig, Mel Ott, Pete Rose, Hank Aaron, Felipe Alou, Sammy Sosa, A-Rod, etc.

I just checked the list of inductees in the pro football hall of fame and the names tend to be longer and not so crossword friendly. Curiously, tennis is another sport that shows up a lot in crosswords due to the fame of leading tennis athletes and the shortness of their names like Arthur Ashe, Monica Celis, Andre Agassi, Hana Mandlikova, Ilya Nastase, Chris Hevert, Naomi Osaka, both first and last, and lately, Igor Sviyantek, who just lost to WTA finals champion Coco Goff for the first time in a while. Will also said, sometimes it takes a while for names to enter the crossword canon. That's part of the reason for all

the oldies. And yes, there are three uses of ought in Raymond's sample as well as one ought's, the answer to the clue, some valuable 1920s to 40s baseball cards. Will points out that more contemporary players have also appeared in times crosswords, the object of Rooker's Envy, Alec Bohm, along with Alec Marsh, Aaron Judge, the aforementioned Juan Soto, Gabe Kapler, Luis Severino, Robinson Cano, Tim Anderson, and of course Shohei Otani. Now I'll note that the website Defector publishes pretty sports-heavy crosswords, the first of which, contributed by Ben Zimmer, was baseball-themed. But the site's crossword submission guidelines specify that people and athletes of note

beyond the aughts and aloos of the world are encouraged, especially when they fall outside the typical white male sports canon. We'd love to see more Willie O'Ree or Naomi Germa in these puzzles. So I emailed defector crossword editor, Kim Vu, who was on Hang Up this past July. Kim said, yes, baseball

is almost definitely overrepresented, though the data set you have is probably incomplete. Puzzles published in New York Times books tend to lean older, and older puzzles tend to lean toward baseball clues as they're sports clues. That said, I did a cursory search on Xwordinfo, which is pretty complete as a database for the New York Times crossword, and since January 1, 2020, baseball has shown up as an actual word in clues 257 times compared to 181 for football, 163 for golf, 118 for basketball, 113 for soccer, and 63 for hockey. Keem says I would hazard a guess that overall, baseball as a share of all sports clues is probably shrinking, but still is a sizable plurality.

As for why, he mentioned all those short, vowel-heavy answers, but he added, more importantly, baseball has a huge incumbency advantage. Editors by and large tend to favor including new stuff only if it's interesting or inferrable or intuitive to the average solver. So because aloo and aht have been included so many times already in puzzles, it's taken as a given that solvers could and should know them. And since baseball and golf in their modern legible forms have been around a lot longer than other sports, their longer runs as pop culture that should be knowable by the average

solver mean that more terms from those sports have entered that emeritus level. Plus, he says, baseball still occupies a spot in the imagination as America's pastime. So the average constructor, who let's be honest, almost certainly doesn't know ball, will guess that a baseball fact is more relevant to their average solver straw man, likely a middle-aged white person, than say women's soccer. So as fill options come up, they're more likely to consciously or subconsciously discount references to sports they think of as less popular relative to baseball. Or put another way, if a constructor hasn't personally heard of it, they probably avoid including it. And since constructors are mostly white and mostly male, that tends to favor baseball over the WNBA or NWSL. Finally, as an example, Asia, AJA,

has appeared 33 times in major publications since WNBA star Asia Wilson was drafted first overall, five times it was clued as the actress Asia Naomi King, four times as Asiah Wilson, and 24 times including all five New York Times instances as the Steely Dan album. So even when constructors and editors are given a super relevant, inclusive option for a piece of fill, they still tend to hedge toward things that they think are in the mainstream cultural corpus. And again, Keem says, I'd argue that since baseball already has the longest record of facts and names in the cultural corpus, by both longevity and sheer number of players, it becomes tautological. That said, along the

broader movement toward representation in crosswords, I would say there are more conscious attempts to diversify sports references in general. So, in conclusion, baseball's crossword power is waning, but for now it's still the crossword king. So while you're waiting to tackle the New York Times crossword again, you may want to bone up on words like bloop and names like bogs and hobs. Well, that was fun. Sort of a recursive segment in Infinity Mirror. Me on Effectively Wild, playing me on Hang Up and Listen, playing me on Effectively Wild.

If you're a crossword doer, by the way. The Tech Guild ended its strike and its boycott request on Tuesday, albeit without a contract, so you can now return to your crosswords without provoking any crosswords. I hope to have Brent Rooker back on, and if and when we do, I can gloat about being right about baseball and crosswords. He's a data-driven guy, I'm sure he'll appreciate the research, as I appreciate Raymond's research. This actually seems similar to me to what I have brought up about baseball references and scenes in movies. We don't really get baseball movies so much anymore, except by the Effectively Wild definition. Full blown baseball movies, I mean.

But we get a lot of baseball content in non-baseball movies, and we've discussed some of the reasons for that. I think it's a product of who makes movies, when they grew up, the many baseball movies maybe they were exposed to, and also that romantic, literary, maybe cinematic notion of the national pastime. To mix my sports, I think baseball is still sort of punching above its weight when it comes to pop culture mentions, even as contemporary baseball players struggle to break into the national consciousness. That will do it for today. And hey, if you want more me on other podcasts, you can catch me on Button Mash, my video game podcast on the Ringerverse feed, and on the Ringer's Prestige TV feed, you can hear me and Mallory Rubin

breaking down only murders in the building season four, and me and Van Lathan discussing the return of Yellowstone. You can also support this podcast by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free, and get themselves access to some perks. Justine, Zev Ravine, Jamie K, Jay Shapiro, and Bill Wong, thanks to all of you. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can send your questions and comments and intro and outro themes to podcast at fangraphs.com. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups

slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild. And you can check the show page of Fan Crafts or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then.

Take me to the diamond. Lead me through the turnstile Shower me with data That I never thought to compile Now I'm freely now a scorecard With a cracker-jack of smile Effectively wild