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The Padres will almost certainly be one of them. Wolff seemed to acknowledge as much last week, saying he assumed San Diego “would be a team [Sasaki] “You will look seriously.”
Okay then! It's time for the Padres to pitch to one of the world's top sports stars. Here's what that stadium might look like and why San Diego might be the place:
1. It is a unique opportunity
Let's start by talking about baseball. Strictly baseball. When Wolff was asked point-blank what Sasaki was looking for in a suitor, his answer started with the obvious: Sasaki wants to win.
“The best thing I can say is that he cared about how teams performed in terms of overall success, whether this year or in years past,” Wolff said. “He watches a lot of Major League Baseball games.”
Sure, there are organizations that have recently won more than the Padres. But San Diego has reached the postseason in three of the past five years — in a baseball-centric market that is uniquely hungry for a winner.
“I feel like we're in a good position for a number of reasons,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “First, we're in San Diego. We sell out our stadium every night. We have a very competitive ballclub. And it's an opportunity for him to come in and create a legacy for himself — to help win their first World Series.”
Wolfe, who is also Darvish's agent, would not go into detail about that relationship. But he praised general manager AJ Preller in the summer for his handling of Darvish's personal matters, which kept Darvish away from the team.
The Padres did not specify the level of Darvish's involvement in this process, but…
“You'll be involved,” Schildt said. “To what degree? That will be up to Darvish, and of course, AJ will help take care of that. I feel confident that Darvish will take his rightful place in doing what he can.”
Of course, the organizational ties with Japan are much deeper than those with Darvish. Japanese promotion icon Hideo Nomo is one of Preller's senior advisors, and the team has long made scouting in Japan a priority, even as other organizations have cut back. He – she Recently landed them left Yours sincerely, Yuki Matsui, one of Sasaki's WBC teammates.
Of everything Wolff said last Tuesday in Dallas at the winter meetings, this was perhaps the most notable:
“There's an argument that a small or mid-market team might be more beneficial to him as a soft landing coming from Japan, given what he's been through and not having a pleasant experience with the media. It might be so. I'm not saying it will be. I don't know how he'll see it.” “But it might be useful to him.”
To reiterate a separate point made by Wolff, Sasaki is not ruling out big market clubs. But he was clearly upset by the way his family was being highlighted amid rumors that he would be leaving Japan. While the Dodgers remain among the favorites to land Sasaki, this appears to be a point in the Padres' favor.
Additionally, there is something to be said about the market itself. It's a baseball-obsessed city. It is a city hungry for heroism. It's the city that fills the stadium every night. But it's also not the kind of event where Sasaki will be directly in the national public eye. Or the kind of place where he would be booed off the mound or mocked in public.
Here is another area that Wolf explicitly mentioned. Since the arrival of pitching coach Ruben Niebla in 2021, the Padres have been progressive in their pitching development. And in February they did He opened a laboratory for promotion and biomechanics At Point Loma Nazarene University.
The Padres have been adept at managing their workload as well under Niebla. They turned Michael King and Seth Lugo into aces recently He received Cy Young Award votes. They both worked as paraprofessionals before arriving in San Diego. It's made easier to rotate with parameters but not constraints.
Sasaki's case is clearly different. But some similarities apply. He's a 23-year-old starter who has missed time the past two seasons with shoulder and oblique injuries. He has yet to reach 130 innings. He comes from Japan, where he was often expected to play just once a week.
Sasaki must be tempered with the rigors of big league pitching. But if there is an organization that has proven its ability, it is this one.
“I had Robin lead this effort with a great team of people around him,” Preller said. “It's a really good place for a pitcher. … We hear that from pitchers all the time, that they want to be here, to be in San Diego, because they feel like they're going to get better. That's something we're proud of.”
5. “Weather and comfort”
Hey, I'm only bringing this up because Wolfe brought it up first. Speaking last week, he cited “weather and comfort” as two areas Sasaki is looking for.
I probably don't need to go into too much detail here. The weather and comfort in San Diego are excellent. In addition, Sasaki will be a player at Petco Park, one of the sports Best pitcher parkswhich should bring a special amount of comfort.
In the end, this probably wouldn't be the reason Sasaki made his decision. But, hey, it couldn't hurt.
2024-12-16 15:23:50
