The Major League Baseball offseason is in the home stretch. It is Jan. 13 while some teams have pitchers and catchers report to spring training on Feb. 10. Less than a month!
And yet, a good number of free agents remain. On our free agent tracker, three of the top eight are still unsigned. We could extend that out to five of the top 12, seven of the top 15 or 23 of the top 50. The message remains the same: There’s plenty of work to be done between now and the start of spring training.
One of the top names remaining is Alex Bregman and R.J. Anderson has a breakdown of his market.
As for the rest, we’ll gather the news and rumors of the day right here.
Blue Jays meet with Sasaki
The Blue Jays hosted Roki Sasaki for a meeting, and presumably a pitch to sign with the team, last week, according to The Athletic. It’s a long list of teams heavily pursuing Sasaki, including but not necessarily limited to the Dodgers, Padres, Cubs, Yankees, Mets, Rangers, Giants and now Blue Jays.
The 23-year-old right-handed starting pitcher was 10-5 with a 2.35 ERA and 129 strikeouts in 111 innings in Japan’s NPB last season. He has a career 2.02 ERA and ace-level stuff.
The key fact here is Sasaki didn’t accrue the necessary service time to become a true free agent and net the type of deal Yoshinobu Yamamoto did last offseason. Sasaki is subject to international free agent rules, capping his earning potential this time around.
Speaking of which …
Sasaki bidding impacts IFA
The deadline for Sasaki to sign is Jan. 23, while the international free agent signing period reopens Jan. 15. A lengthy report in The Athletic notes teams interest in Sasaki are having to maneuver around both the IFA period and hopefully signing Sasaki. They’ll need all the bonus money for a few years in order to ink Sasaki, which means illicit handshake agreements for international teens are being broken.
A good illustration here would be Darell Morel from the Dominican Republic, who was supposed to land with the Dodgers. Instead, he’s now expected to sign with the Pirates for $1.8 million, according to Baseball America, while the Dodgers hold onto their IFA money and wait out Sasaki.
Words like “crazy” and “absolutely insane” were used by The Athletic to describe what is going on here with the IFA period and Sasaki bidding coinciding here for a few days.
