{"id":19100,"date":"2024-12-19T00:15:26","date_gmt":"2024-12-19T00:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportnews.azontree.com\/?p=19100"},"modified":"2024-12-19T00:15:26","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T00:15:26","slug":"red-sox-predicted-to-make-very-serious-bid-for-102-mph-fireballer-roki-sasaki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportnews.azontree.com\/?p=19100","title":{"rendered":"Red Sox Predicted to Make \u2018Very Serious\u2019 Bid For 102-mph Fireballer Roki Sasaki"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"post-featured-container-id\">\n<div id=\"post-featured\">\n<div>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Red-Sox-Predicted-Very-Serious-Bid-Roki-Sasaki.jpg?quality=65&amp;strip=all&amp;w=780\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 820px) 95vw, 780px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Red-Sox-Predicted-Very-Serious-Bid-Roki-Sasaki.jpg?quality=65&amp;strip=all&amp;w=780 780w, https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Red-Sox-Predicted-Very-Serious-Bid-Roki-Sasaki.jpg?quality=45&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1100 1100w, https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Red-Sox-Predicted-Very-Serious-Bid-Roki-Sasaki.jpg?quality=65&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1350 1350w\" alt=\"Red Sox Predicted to Make \u2018Very Serious\u2019 Bid For 102-mph Fireballer Roki Sasaki\" width=\"780\" height=\"439\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>Getty<\/p>\n<p>Roki Sasaki<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Even after acquiring the top-of-the-rotation ace they have been missing since Chris Sale was shut down with an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery after the 2019 season, the Boston Red Sox have made no secret of the fact that upgrading their pitching staff remains the team\u2019s top offseason priority.<\/p>\n<p>Boston on December 11 traded four highly regarded minor leaguers, including their fourth-ranked overal prospect catcher Kyle Teel, for Chicago White Sox lefty power-pitcher Garrett Crochet. They expect that the 25-year-old who struck out 12.9 batters for every nine innings pitched last year will anchor their rotation and take some pressure off Tanner Houck, Brayan Bello and the other Red Sox starters.<\/p>\n<p>In 2024 the Red Sox starting staff ranked a respectable seventh in the Major Baseball when it came to ERA, posting a 3.81 figure that was actually good enough for fourth in the American League. But the Boston starters had quite a bit of trouble simply staying in the game. With 839 2\/3 innings pitched, the Red Sox rotation placed a mediocre 16th in baseball for durability \u2014 an average of barely over five innings per outing.<\/p>\n<h2>Red Sox Need to Do Better With Starting Staff<\/h2>\n<p>In other words, the Red Sox need more and better starters, over and above Crochet. On December 10, a starter became available who immediately leaped to the top of the \u201cmost sought-after\u201d list for the Red Sox, as well as the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers and several other franchises \u2014 even though he has never thrown an inning, or even a pitch in the Major Leagues.<\/p>\n<p>That pitcher is 23-year-old Japanese fireballer Roki Sasaki, who pitched the last four seasons \u2014 the first four of his professional career \u2014 for the Chiba Lotte Marines of Japan\u2019s Pacific League. In his four-year career at the top level of Japan\u2019s pro baseball circuit, Sasaki has put together an ERA of 2.41 and a stunningly low WHIP of 0.833. His fastball has been clocked as high as 102 mph.<\/p>\n<p>Sasaki\u2019s Japanese team \u201cposted\u201d him on December 10, meaning that MLB teams had 45 days from that date to lure the young star and sign him to a contract.<\/p>\n<p>While Sasaki has been termed a \u201cdream target\u201d for the Yankees, and the Dodgers are widely seen as favorites to land him due to the West Coast\u2019s relative proximity to his home country of Japan, the Red Sox are now seen as \u201cvery serious\u201d suitors for the international phenom hurler, according to MLB.com.<\/p>\n<h2>Boston\u2019s \u2018Impressive\u2019 Pitching Development a Selling Point<\/h2>\n<p>\u201c(The Red Sox\u2019) main selling point might be the history of Japanese pitchers having success and positive experiences playing in Boston: Daisuke Matsuzaka, Koji Uehara and Junichi Tazawa,\u201d wrote <em>MLB.com<\/em> columnist Jonathan Mayo. \u201cThey have an impressive pitching development program and it certainly doesn\u2019t hurt when the general manager, Craig Breslow, can speak directly to it (as opposed to just handing it off to \u2018the experts\u2019). Breslow also personally scouted Sasaki for one of his starts in Japan in September.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another factor that might work in the Red Sox favor is Sasaki\u2019s reported preference to play in a smaller market, as stated by his agent Joel Wolfe. Though Boston is a team that often finds itself in the national spotlight, it has only the 11th largest market, in terms of population, in MLB according to statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau.<\/p>\n<p>Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist and writer who now covers baseball and other sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Press Association awards for sports feature writing. Vankin is also the author of five nonfiction books on a variety of topics, as well as nine graphic novels including most recently &#8220;Last of the Gladiators&#8221; published by Dynamite Entertainment. More about Jonathan Vankin<\/p>\n<h2>More Heavy on Red Sox News<\/h2>\n<p>Loading more stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even after acquiring the top-of-the-rotation ace they have been missing since Chris Sale was shut down with an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery after the 2019 season, the Boston Red Sox have made no secret of the fact that upgrading their pitching staff remains the team\u2019s top offseason priority. Boston on December 11 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":19101,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Red Sox Predicted to Make \u2018Very Serious\u2019 Bid For 102-mph Fireballer Roki Sasaki - NEWS USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sportnews.azontree.com\/?p=19100\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Red Sox Predicted to Make \u2018Very Serious\u2019 Bid For 102-mph Fireballer Roki Sasaki - NEWS USA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Even after acquiring the top-of-the-rotation ace they have been missing since Chris Sale was shut down with an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery after the 2019 season, the Boston Red Sox have made no secret of the fact that upgrading their pitching staff remains the team\u2019s top offseason priority. 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