Blue Jays reportedly meet with Sasaki as sweepstakes enter home stretch

TORONTO -- The Blue Jays are swinging big … again.

Japanese star Roki Sasaki met with the Blue Jays in Toronto last week, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (subscription required) reported Monday, making them the eighth team known to have met with the 23-year-old. The other known clubs include the Mets, Yankees, Dodgers, Cubs, Giants, Rangers and Padres.

The Blue Jays did not confirm the report.

This is no longer unfamiliar territory for the Blue Jays, who were involved deep into the Juan Soto pursuit in December. A year prior, the Blue Jays took a run at Shohei Ohtani, hosting him at their complex in Dunedin, Fla., for a not-so-secretive visit before eventually losing out to the Dodgers. The result has been a string of heartbreaks for an organization desperately trying to make a major move, even though those heartbreaks are better than not being invited to the dance at all.

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Now, Sasaki is in the spotlight. Being under 25 with less than six seasons played in a professional foreign league, Sasaki is subject to the international bonus pool and its signing window, which opens Wednesday. Instead of signing something like the 12-year, $325 million deal the Dodgers gave Yoshinobu Yamamoto last winter, Sasaki’s initial price tag will sign for far less. Think more in the range of Ohtani’s $2.3 million bonus with the Angels in 2017, which is why teams are lining up for such a rare opportunity.

The Blue Jays need to make themselves stand out, though, and coming off a 74-88 season, it’s not an easy case to make. This begins, of course, with what Sasaki is looking for.

“We’ve had numerous conversations about team location, market size, team success, things like that,” agent Joel Wolfe said on Dec. 30. “He doesn’t seem to look at it in the typical way that other players do. He has a more long-term, global view of things. I believe Roki is also very interested in pitching development and how a team is going to help him get better, both in the near future and over the course of his career.”

• 'It was like the Roki film festival': Patient Sasaki will begin to narrow field

Frankly, if Sasaki isn’t looking at his free agency “in a typical way,” that could be good news for the Blue Jays. Let’s not worry too much about the Canadian winter scaring off Sasaki during his visit, either. While snow fell in Toronto last week, it fell in Sasaki’s hometown in Japan, too.

Money is not an immediate factor here, which is what’s so fascinating. Money alone has allowed the eager Blue Jays to elbow their way into the Ohtani and Soto sweepstakes, but they’ll need to sell the organization to Sasaki, first and foremost. In this specific area of Sasaki conversations, the Blue Jays are too often dismissed for their lack of success in developing young pitching. That’s not necessarily the proper framing.

Sasaki isn’t an 18-year-old kid trying to learn a changeup. While the Blue Jays have struggled to develop young pitching into MLB talent -- especially the kind of MLB talent that stays healthy -- they’ve done an exceptional job at acquiring veteran pitchers and keeping them on the mound. Sasaki falls somewhere in the middle at 23, but this would be more of a job for Pete Walker and the Blue Jays’ training staff, not Single-A pitching coaches and the complex staff.

Kevin Gausman, Chris Bassitt and José Berríos have all found success in Toronto, but their cases were more about maintaining success they’d already found. Perhaps Yusei Kikuchi is a better example here, as he landed in Toronto with plenty of talent but little consistency. Kikuchi’s 2022 season was ugly after he signed with the Blue Jays in mid-March and never quite caught up, but his leap forward in ‘23 was one of the best stories of that season and this offseason, he landed a three-year, $63 million deal with the Angels at 33.

Finding comps for Sasaki is difficult, though, given how unique this situation is. He represents everything the Blue Jays dream of, from his talent to his age to the opportunity to seize a piece of the incredible Japanese market, but every team in baseball has the same hearts in their eyes. Back up the hill the Blue Jays go, though, chasing a player who would turn a slow offseason into a celebration.