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Jan. 15 has come and gone. That means the new international signing period is upon us, and Roki Sasaki is eligible to sign. We dig into that and take a look at how the Hall of Fame voting is going, plus: The TV rights deal is FINALLY sorted. I’m Levi Weaver, here with Ken Rosenthal. Welcome to The Windup!
Worth Your Time: The best Sasaki story I’ve read
It is officially Roki Sasaki Watch Week. The 2025 international free agent signing period began yesterday — here’s a rundown of the biggest signings of the day — but if you’ve been following along, you know that there’s one big name that has dominated this year’s class: Sasaki.
This week, Sasaki narrowed his list down to three finalists: The Dodgers, Padres and Blue Jays. He has until next Thursday to make a decision.
That’s all we know for now, but in the meantime, Stephen Nesbitt has written a story that I’m giving the official Windup Seal of Insistence: you gotta read it. In it, Nesbitt writes about how Sasaki is from Rikuzentakata, a village that lost 1,800 of its 23,300 inhabitants when much of the city was flattened in a tsunami after the 9.1 Tohoku earthquake in March 2011.
Sasaki’s father and paternal grandparents were among those whose lives were lost in the natural disaster, and one passage in particular — quoting Sasaki’s agent Joel Wolfe — sheds some light on a question many have asked for months: Why would Sasaki come stateside now, when he would likely make hundreds of millions of dollars more by waiting two years?
‘Given what’s happened in his life,’ Wolfe said, ‘I think he looks at the world very differently.’
Maybe there would be a $300 million deal on the table in two years. Maybe not.
‘There are no absolutes in baseball,’ Wolfe said. ‘And the way Roki looks at life, there are no absolutes in life.’
In Rikuzentakata, Murakami finds that worldview pervasive among young tsunami survivors.
The whole story is absolutely worth your time. It deserves to appear in the next edition of this newsletter’s most-clicked section. Here it is again, so you don’t have to scroll back up.
More international free agent news:
- Two-way player Shotaro Morii (A’s) is coming stateside even earlier than Sasaki, at 18 years old.
- Cris Rodriguez (Tigers) and Elian Peña (Mets) both signed bonuses that broke franchise records.
- And lastly, Armstrong Muhoozi of Uganda (Pirates) became just the second position player from the East African nation to sign with an MLB organization. Greg Presto spent time with Muhoozi over the last couple of months, and has a video feature to go with a great story.
Ken’s Notebook: Yes, Sasaki could develop in majors with Jays
Twice this week, once on my own podcast and once as a guest on another, I mentioned the Toronto Blue Jays seemed an odd fit for Sasaki.
Sasaki, as Andy McCullough and I wrote in our story about the right-hander’s meeting with the Jays, is 23, still maturing as a pitcher and thought to be heavily weighing the quality of a team’s pitching development in his decision. And the Jays are not exactly renowned for their pitching development.
Jays fans objected, rightly pointing out that Pete Walker, the team’s pitching coach since 2013, is highly respected. So, I want to make the proper distinction: The Jays have not done well with minor-league pitching development. But Sasaki will develop in the majors — and at that level, the team has succeeded with any number of pitchers, both starters and relievers.
Sasaki’s countryman, Yusei Kikuchi, had a rough first season with the Jays, then rebounded in his second (though he did post better results in his third after getting traded to the Houston Astros than he did in the four months before the deal). And Kikuchi is just one example.
Marcus Stroman emerged under Walker. Aaron Sanchez led the American League in ERA. J.A. Happ had his only 20-win season. Robbie Ray won a Cy Young Award. Marco Estrada and Ross Stripling were among those who rejuvenated their careers. And just last season, Bowden Francis broke through at 28.
In the bullpen, Jordan Romano and Tim Mayza were low-round picks who performed better in the majors than they did in the minors. And those are just some of the success stories, reasons to believe that if Sasaki joined the Blue Jays, he could thrive.
Still, people around baseball would be shocked if the Jays beat out the other two finalists for Sasaki: the Dodgers and Padres. The Jays’ front office is unstable, with team president Mark Shapiro entering the final year of his contract and general manager Ross Atkins having only two years left. Their roster also is unstable, with first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and shortstop Bo Bichette unsigned beyond this season.
The Jays, at least, can argue that they know how to handle pitching at the major-league level. And that, perhaps, is one of the reasons Sasaki is considering them so strongly.
HoF Countdown: Checking the Hall of Fame tracker
In five days, we’ll know which players will join Dave Parker and Dick Allen — elected by the era committee — in the Baseball Hall of Fame. While the announcement isn’t until Tuesday, we’re starting to get a reasonably good idea of who’s in and who’s out.
First of all, Ryan Thibodeaux has a tracker here. As of this writing, 150 public ballots (and 10 anonymous ones) have been added to the tracker. That’s about 41 percent of the expected total, so while we don’t have full confirmation on any inductions, we can make some educated guesses.
We do know that 21 of the 28 players have already been eliminated from contention. Of the remaining seven, two — Chase Utley (54.4 percent) and Alex Rodriguez (40.6 percent) — seem highly unlikely to cross the 75 percent threshold.
Here’s who’s left:
Probably in: Ichiro Suzuki (100 percent 👀), CC Sabathia (93.1 percent)
The discrepancy between the tracker and the final results usually trends down slightly. Last year, Billy Wagner’s final total in the tracker was 77.8 percent. He finished five votes short, at 73.8 percent. But even with that trend, Suzuki and Sabathia seem safe. The only real question is whether Ichiro will be the first position player (and second-ever player) to be elected unanimously.
Probably out: Andruw Jones (73.8 percent)
He’s an interesting case, but given the downward trend, Jones faces an upward battle.
Edge cases: Billy Wagner (84.4 percent), Carlos Beltrán (80 percent)
It’s Wagner’s 10th and final year on the ballot. After missing it by such a narrow margin last year, my guess is that he’ll get in, though — as Tyler Kepner tells us — Wagner is just ready for it to be over. Beltrán is right on the cusp. I have no idea which way it will go.
More Hall of Fame:
This, Again: TV landscape finally sorted?
After all the chaos, the bankruptcy hearings, the launching of new networks (and plans for future consolidation) and general bad blood between baseball and Diamond Sports (which had once been its biggest broadcaster), the final two dominoes have fallen: The Cincinnati Reds and Texas Rangers have both announced their TV deals for 2025.
The Reds are going to remain with FanDuel Sports (formerly Bally Sports) for the 2025 season. This is a reversal of course, since the Reds had originally announced MLB would be producing and distributing their games this year.
The Rangers were the one team left without a TV partner. That is no longer the case. They’ll be with Victory+, joining the Dallas Stars, they announced yesterday. Both packages are for local in-market viewing, and will not include nationally televised games.
Mercifully, this will (hopefully) be our last bit of news on the topic … at least until some of these contracts expire at the end of next year.
Handshakes and High Fives
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(Top photo: Eric Espada / Getty Images)
