Roki Sasaki sweepstakes begin, and the Padres like their position – elcajon newson Elcajon News only

DALLAS — Mike Shildt caused a bit of a furor when, during a radio appearance Monday at the winter meetings, he expressed a measure of confidence that the Padres will sign Japanese superstar Roki Sasaki.

“We fully expect to be right there in the mix and at the end of the day have Sasaki a Padre,” Shildt said on MLB Network Radio.

The Padres do believe they can land Sasaki. However, the significance of Shildt’s words might have been overblown in some quarters — by those who are not fluent in Shildtese, of which positivity is the basis and not everything said is as remarkable as it might seem.

“I’m an optimist by nature, but I’m not a blind one,” Shildt said later in the day when asked to clarify his remarks. “I don’t think I know.”

The Padres manager went on to offer reasons for his optimism about Sasaki, the 23-year-old right-hander who was posted by his Japanese club Monday and is expected to sign with a major league team in mid-January.

“I feel like the organization is in a really good place with Sasaki,” Shildt said. “If there’s an open market competition to be had, I feel like we’re in a good spot for a multitude of reasons. One, we’re in San Diego. We sell out our ballpark every night. We have a very competitive ballclub. It’s a chance for him to come in and create a legacy for himself to help win the first World Series. We have a general manager that has roots in Japan that clearly has been in the market with Darvish. We traded for (Yu) Darvish and going to get (Yuki) Matsui. Heck, A.J. learned to speak Japanese years ago and the recruitment of Darvish.”

That would be Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller, who is fluent in Spanish and has dabbled in Japanese enough to try it out in the recruitment of Shohei Ohtani when he came to the United States seven years ago.

“I’ll leave it to the professionals to do the translating,” Preller said of any plans to woo Sasaki with his language skills. “Leave it to the fluent Japanese speakers. We’ve got a lot in the organization to do the heavy lifting there.”

Among those would be Darvish and adviser Hideo Nomo, two of the three winningest pitchers in Japanese history.

Darvish skipped almost all of spring training in 2023 to spend the entirety of Team Japan’s preparation and the whole World Baseball Classic with his home country’s team. Sasaki was a star on that team.

Tuesday begins a 45-day window in which Sasaki can sign. Every MLB club is ostensibly in the running since he is not old enough or experienced enough to come to the United States as an unrestricted free agent. Instead, he is treated as an international signee.

That means the maximum teams can offer Sasaki is whatever their international bonus pool is. The largest pool is $7.55 million for 2025. The Padres will have $6.26 million. Teams can make trades to add up to an additional 50% to their bonus pool. (The total up-front price for Sasaki will also include a posting fee equal to 20 percent of his signing bonus.)

It is the same circumstance by which the Angels got Ohtani, now a three-time Most Valuable Player, for a $2.3 million signing bonus in 2017.

“I think it speaks to the player,” Preller said. “We saw that with Shohei Ohtani. A player that understands the rules and what it means to potentially wait a couple of years (but wants to) challenge the major leagues at this stage, understanding that it’s got a financial impact for himself. It’s honestly kind of refreshing to see somebody that thinks he’s ready to go compete. (He) understands he may sacrifice some money to do it in the near term but is betting on himself is what I assume. … I think, honestly, it’s kind of cool.”

There have been widespread rumors for more than a year that the Dodgers had essentially reached an agreement with Sasaki. But the Padres have long expressed optimism that they can land the pitcher Preller on Monday called a “phenom.”

The organization has devoted much time and energy to scouting and learning about him over the past several years. And they have Darvish, who is a hero and mentor to many Japanese players, including Sasaki.

In addition to throwing hard — his fastball can still reach 100 mph though his average dipped to 96.9 mph in 2024 — Sasaki throws one of the meanest splitters currently being thrown anywhere on the planet. He has a 2.02 ERA with 524 strikeouts over 414⅔ innings in his four seasons pitching for the Chiba Lotte Marines.

The Padres have three solid starting pitchers in Darvish, Dylan Cease and Michael King. Randy Vásquez and Matt Waldron are their other experienced starters.

Getting Sasaki at a bargain price would be a gigantic win for a club operating with some budget restrictions this offseason.

“Starting pitching, you’ve got to keep hitting it all the time,” Preller said. “You’ve got to keep finding it in all different ways. … We like some of the depth that we have, but … we’re going to keep looking for somebody that can pitch toward the front of a rotation and then give us some quality innings.”