What's up sports fans? My name is Zach Smith and I was a college football coach for 14 years. Coaching places like Ohio State, Florida, Marshall Temple all across the landscape of college football. And yes, if you want to Google me, you will find out there was a massive scandal that led to my firing, Urban Meyer's suspension. And after that, I started a sports show on YouTube and podcast called Menace of Sports. It's behind the scenes, unfiltered, it's raw and real. If you want to learn more about college football, come hang out with us. [Music] Hello, everyone, and welcome to the socks prospects.com podcast that lets no more resource for information on the Boston Red Sox from top to bottom from Fort Myers to Worcester across the bike to Fenway. And all stops in between. Thank you for listening. My name is Ian Kundell. I'm the director of scouting of socks prospects.com. And I'm honored to be joined again by a recurring guest and friend of the show, Jeff Ponce, a baseball America. Welcome back, Jeff, to the show. I was your off season being going so far. Busy, man, as it usually is Ian. I'm glad to be here, but yeah, I was out in Arizona for the first week of the fall week. So saw, you know, I think all but two games that got played during that first full week, which was a lot of fun. I was out there by myself, so it was a lot of scouting, eating and cutting video, writing up players when I got back to the hotel room. So that was cool and came home and just jumped right into handbook season. So kind of here in my cave a month as I write up five different systems. So yeah, I guess it's 150. So all of baseball America just goes to the cave and then they all come out with just massive beards. Like what's that? You know, the guy who like, I can't even remember. It's like the child's tail where the guy, you know, he hibernates for the winter and grows a massive beard and comes out. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's kind of like that. I always have the beard, but it's a little bit, I trimmed it a little bit yesterday. The next time you'll see sunlight is spring training of next year. Yeah, I know. I'm going to leave the house and try to walk around and, you know, get my workouts in, get some sunshine, some vitamin D, all that. But yeah, I mean, I don't have to travel anywhere, which is nice. Just doing my thing. So yeah, it's a busy time of year. Got rule five coming up after that. And of course, you know, all the fantasy stuff with Dylan over there. So it's a busy time of year. We start rolling some pretty big content over the next month or so. Definitely. I mean, you guys are already in the top 10 season or, you know, they've started rolling out. I noticed that starting with the National League. So Red Sox fans are going to have to wait a little bit to find out what Alex has got working up there. But yeah, before we go any further, if you enjoyed the show, there are some ways that you can support us for spread the word. Tell your neighborhood friend that you find when you're walking your dog or you're outside getting some vitamin D about the show. You can also help by rating and reviewing us on Apple podcast, iTunes, Spotify, wherever you listen, I was butcher that insert joke fart by the way. I'm sorry. That was brutal, but whatever. We're just going to keep rolling because I don't like that line, but I do what I've told. And of course, you could also support us at patreon.com/sauch prospects and get some of the sweet perks for your support of the show. And finally, you can send your emails to podcast@sauch prospects.com because we want to talk about what and what you want to hear about. And speaking of things, people want to talk about. We had quite the buzz generated. What was it last week? Because I it was funny. I was actually up late and I was watching college football, maybe some action. I can't remember exactly or something. Something was on baby basketball. And all of a sudden I look on my Twitter and I see a tweet from the Chiba Lotte Marines that I couldn't read, but it looked kind of important. So I translated it because there are a few redeemer features still on X. And it was announcing that Rokey Sasaki was going they were going to initiate the process of posting him. Where were you when that happened? Then what did you kind of what was your first thoughts when you when you woke up? I'm guessing you woke up and saw the news. I think I got a push notification sent to my phone. So that was Friday night. Yeah. Went to bed after watching, you know, some some NBA basketball or something along those lines. And yeah, it was just, you know, laying in bed. And we had seen some news kind of break earlier in the week from Kylie McDaniel that there was a high likelihood that he would be posted. I was kind of kicking around writing something up on him. And I had delayed a little bit, which is a bad mistake on my part. We've all been there before. Know if this guy posts, like, you know, there's rules in place that significantly limit what his income is coming over. And there's other rules that limit how much his team can get in a posting fee. So it didn't make financial sense. The only thing that made sense was if there was some sort of a handshake agreement when he signed back in the 2019 draft, because he's still very young. He's 23 right now. Yeah, I just turned 23 like a week ago, too. Yeah. So he's 23 for all of next year. But some sort of like handshake agreement that he could be released from his contract when he said go. And it seems like that's been kind of floating around for a year or two. There were some somewhat public contract negotiations and stalls with him a year ago, if you remember, and just kind of to put things into perspective. Japanese contracts don't really have a term the way that American contracts do. They're kind of year to year contracts. It's the why there's certain players and like year three will go out in a free agency in Japan. I would say that the best way for me to describe it, and this is probably somewhat wrong, but the way that I sort of think about it conceptually is it's almost as if you have a contract with Nippon Professional Baseball League, and your team is sort of like, you know, part of that, but it's sort of on the team from year to year to year to negotiate, whether you're still with that club or not. Yeah. Players get international free agency after nine years. So like Sagano, who's the other Japanese pitcher that's coming over, he's an international free agent. So there's no posting fee attached to him. But he's also like 35 or something. He is a really 30. Yeah. It's a back end starter for a couple of years type of game. So we'll see. We'll see where that goes. But with with Sasaki, it was kind of funny. So like, I was sort of the mind of like, maybe it happens, but we got to wait and see. Yeah. Of course, it was like two o'clock in the morning. I think I got the push notification. And here's the other thing in Japan is like their legacy media, like their mainstream media, doesn't report rumors or break stories. It's typically the the team, the tabloids that break that sort of stuff. There's almost like two segments of media. Oh, so it's so it's kind of like more like the soccer approach, how they do it. Yeah, almost like we've seen England as well. Yeah. And so the rumors are out there in the tabloids. And then this was the official announcement. It comes from the team. It goes to the newspapers, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, that breaks. And then, you know, we, we got on it and spent all weekend making sure that we churned out a ton of Roki Sasaki content kind of explained because there's a lot of layers to this just beyond the town of the player. It's also the contract stuff. It's also how the posting works. And you know, the timing of this is right at the end of one international free agency period, which goes from January 15th to December 15th. It's kind of bordering on this low period from this from December 16th until January 14 15. It's the time when everyone and baseball wants to take off. Yeah. So it's a funky, it's a funky timeline in that sense. But I think, you know, depending upon when he's posted exactly, is going to depend on which international market he signs him, whether it's the 24 market or the 25. Yeah. If you want to go into that, we can, we can dive a little bit deeper about, yeah, my tinfoil hat conspiracy theory for the 24 market. Oh, I kind of, I'm interested in that. We should let's let's briefly like kind of intro him as a pitcher, and then we'll get to that because I think that's that's that's kind of the two go together, obviously, but the reason there's going to be so much interest and why, frankly, every team has a chance, not really, but like on paper, like hypothetically could. Because I mean, let's be honest, it's not often that out of nowhere or not out of nowhere, because let's be honest, teams have been crapping for this for a while. Like, I'm sure you've heard the same thing. A bunch of people have been floating over to see him for many years in anticipation of this. And that's why like, it's no surprise, you know, Craig Bressel went there. Yeah, of course he did. I'm going to guess what more than half of the GMs have seen him pitch live before, like, I would, I would guess almost all of them because he was in the WBC too. Yeah, right. Yeah. So like, I mean, people have been going there. I like, I know, I know someone who went this off season or went during the season, and they were telling me that there were like, I think 25 scouts there and other front office executives, like, this is, you know, something people have been planning for. And it's interesting, because if you look at his stats, yes, he's not grown a lot of a lot of innings. Like, we're talking about a guy who's been there for four seasons and who has, you know, just about 400 innings total. His career high in innings is 129.1 in 2022. Now, he's been dominant up into that point, though, interestingly, I would argue that 2024 was probably his like worst season in a weird way. And by worst season, we're still talking about a guy who had like 235 ERA with a whip around one. But have you, are you kind of like, are there any hearing concerns about like the innings or, you know, obviously, I think you talked about it on your podcast, he's missing time with injuries, you know, not the bad arm injuries, but still injuries with pitchers, always a concern. Can you talk a little bit about like, the performance you've seen for him and just your kind of hearing was injury stuff and kind of any concerns with the workload management? Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things though, like, when you think about his age, and you think about college pitchers, right, we try to put that into that perspective. I was thinking about this because I think from like a professional starting pitcher standpoint, who's going to throw 160 innings in the major leagues, like, you want that guy having a track record of throwing 160 innings, but this isn't a 25 year old 26 year old 27 28 year old Japanese star coming over, right? This is the youngest star player that we've seen come over. It's him and Shohei Otani. Yeah. And I think we saw it with Otani, like, as a hitter and as a pitcher, he had to develop a little bit, right? But the other part of it is he threw 111 innings last year, it was 91 the year before, plus the innings that he threw in the WBC. And then 129.1. If you're looking at that track record with a with a prospect who is 2021 and 22 years old, you'd be like, oh, yeah, he could jump to 160 next year, right? Like, so I sort of wonder, yeah, how much the durability stuff is a concern versus what his expectations would be as a 23 year old starting pitcher, who's American? No, who picks a point? Like, we look at him as like a workhorse nowadays, right? Like, how many starting pitching prospects go 100 innings? I mean, I think, I think a great example is just look at what Paul Skienz did this year. Like, yeah, that's exactly what comes to mind that I do feel to some of that. The stuff backed up a little bit last year. Now, this is something I want to throw out there. And it's something that I put into my Roki Sasaki article yesterday. And I haven't seen it mentioned by anybody else that's written them up from a data perspective, which I think are like, you know, Lance, my good buddy Lance. And of course, you know, who's who's great at this. I got this from someone who does some work with these teams. They switched their ball tracking tools from a trackman device to more Hawkeye devices this year. So here's some translation in how things are measured. Yeah. And I don't have a great feel for what the calibration was of those trackman devices in years prior, 23, 22, et cetera. So it looks like we added a foot of extension and lost velocity and lost hop in his fastball while not lowering his release height. And not adding flatness to his approach angle, like his V8 and flatten out at all. It's more than likely the difference in the tooling devices that's leading to this jump in extension and some of these other numbers. Yeah. Because those don't those don't add up. You would think they if you're going to add a foot of extension, that other stuff needs to change. Yeah. And we see this when guys jump from trackman to Hawkeye, like out of the draft, like you're in the SEC and you're pitching in front of trackman devices. And that's the data that we have access to from our, our, you know, sources. Yeah. And then they jump into pro ball and let's say they're drafted by the Cardinals and then they throw in Palm Beach Palm Beach is a Florida state league affiliate, which has trackman devices in their parks. And then bang, all of a sudden the numbers look a lot different. He lost three inches a ride. Yeah. So I think that some of it, I don't think he changed that much. So I just think that really, we got to evaluate the guy that we saw this year and then maybe compare and contrast that with some of the Hawkeye numbers that we had from the semi final game where he pitched against Mexico. Yeah. So that being said, the velocity is definitely down this year. Yeah. Well, because it's interesting because he's a three pitch guy. It's fastball splitter slider. Exactly. And if you look and you did a great job in your article breaking it down, but his usage was more or less the same. Like it was a little more splitter, a little less slider last year, but like his fastball usage was pretty static. And as you said, the fastball itself, can you talk a little bit about what that change was and kind of what you saw when you were digging the numbers there? Sure. So like, it's funny because the spin axis is exactly the same year of a year. That tells me that the pitch didn't change all that much. But the velocity was down. Yeah. He's at 99 miles per hour. And this is down down. Yeah. Exactly. He said 99 miles per hour, over like 400 pitches last year. This year, it was like 748 fastballs. He sat 97 miles per hour. The 95th percentile of Elo was 99. This year was 101.2 last year. He had 101, maybe six or seven times this year. He had 101 like 25 times the year before. He hit 102. I think he hit 103 a couple of times as well. You know, it's a riding foreseen fastball. The ride numbers, I would imagine we'll drop a little bit with the switch from the NPV ball to the MLB ball. He was about 16.1 this year from a six foot release height, which is kind of generic. That's like average. But it was from a seven feet of extension. So I think there's something that can be done with the release height and maybe the efficiency on this pitch, which I think might have backed up year over year a little bit. He gets a he gets a lot of armside run though. It was like 14 inches of armside run. Maybe that comes down a little bit and you're looking at like 15 IVB, 11 HP. And I think they could, like I said, lower the release height, good extension, you know, sitting 97 to 99. I think we'll probably see the top and V low a little bit more this year. Now that he's an MLB and maybe he isn't saving that arm a little bit to make sure that he posts fully healthy. You know, it's a it's a plus plus fastball still. I mean, I think when you're sitting 97 to 99 as a starter with some good traits analytically, like the extension that he has and it was the release heights this year were more consistent than they have been in past years. There were some some positives. It's just the performance of the fastball backed up significantly, you know, where he had a he had an in zone swing and miss rate of like 6% this year had a 25% in zone swing and miss rate on the pitch in 2023. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, yes, against it jumped like 200 points or something. Yeah, exactly. And the OPS against was not great. So, you know, we'll see. Well, maybe he just wasn't rear and back and throwing as hard as he typically does. There were some his he has a big leg kick only almost like Mackenzie Gourish where he comes down into that like pronates his his lead foot towards second base kind of thing that we see from a lot of Japanese pitchers like Tanaka did it. Yomomato does it, you know, some of some of some of those traits. It was a little bit less dynamic this year. And I think that's maybe where the velocity wasn't was kind of hiding. There's a little more effort in 23 that maybe he puts a little bit more effort into it. We do see those velocity numbers and he gets behind the ball a little bit and, you know, the IVB at, you know, per second or per split second based on the velocity changes as well. So just, you know, a 90 mile per hour for a scene fastball has a little bit more time to gain traction and backspin than, you know, a 97 mile per hour for a scene. Yeah. So it's still a really good pitch. Yeah, his secondaries though are filthy. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. Let's talk about it. Like the splitter. Yeah. Is this like a pop vibe splitter in the world already? I think it's the best splitter in the world. I think it's this and it's blinker. This is a cut splitter too. So it has numbers similar to like a gyro slider in terms of how it moves. And the ball tracking device, this is really funny. It was the hardest thing when I saw him in WBC is I'm writing down splitter and the ball tracking device, the Hawkeye's picking it up as a cutter because it had. Don't see that very often either. Yeah. And I mean, so it's like negative, you know, 0.5 negative 0.7 HP. I mean, it moves like a gyro slider at 88, 89. It had under 700 RPMs this year on average. I think like, metrically, like the movement, the stuff on this pitch actually got better than it did last year. It was a mile per hour down, but it had twice as much spin last year and it moved, it cut a little bit, excuse me, it moved, it ran a little bit more. Yeah, it typically does. He can manipulate it too. And, you know, almost have it be that cut splitter or turn into a little bit more of a traditional splitter, depending upon how he messes with the grip. So there's some feel stuff for this pitch. The performance was down very, very slightly year over year, but I think some of that might have been the fastball quality is this isn't off speed pitch that plays off of the fastball. Yeah. Like when I wrote about it yesterday, I was like, yeah, the numbers were down, but I don't think the pitch was down necessarily. I actually think you can argue that it might have been better this year. And then a slider, he threw a slider a lot more this year. He had better performance on the slider than he did the previous year was in the zone more with it this year. He slowed it down. That pitch was like a upper 80s sweeper, you know, that was getting somewhere in the in the range of like nine to eight to nine, 10 inches of sweep, which is not a perfect when you're throwing it that hard. Like, this is a really unusual combination of sweep and power. It was more like 84 to 85, sometimes 86 this year or last year, it was like like 87, 88, 90 miles an hour, 91 miles an hour at peak with that movement. So, you know, I think some of that was a change. I don't know if he just didn't once again throw it as hard, but it's still in there. And it's not similar from like what the slider is that Otani kind of unleashed a few years ago that was such a deadly pitch for him. So it's kind of like that standard, very robust, very well manicured three pitch mix that we see from Japanese pitchers where even within those pitches, there's some variance in terms of how he can shape his breaking ball, how he can shake his off speed that depending upon the batter, you can do different things. It's also somebody that it trains and is very close with you Darvish. So I think like that's maybe the guy that you look to a little bit maybe more so than even Otani, though they both have the power and the splitter and the sweeper. You know, I think there's maybe some chances that this guy lengthens his arsenal as he ages and improves. I think just in terms of what the upside is, it's as high as any pitcher in baseball, not just any prospect. I think, you know, would I rank skeens ahead of him right now? Absolutely, skeens. Yeah. And then pitched him in the major leagues and was the best pitcher in baseball in the second half of the season. And he's six months younger than Sasaki is. So is he number two? Probably. I'd have more over painter and I'd have more of a Bubba Chandler and I've seen every single one of those guys in person this year. Yeah, no, it's an interesting case because, you know, as you said, it's a standard three pitches, but it probably can play as closer to five. You know, we've seen that over and over, as you said, and I think the other thing that really stood out to me was his ability to land his secondary stuff in the zone, especially the splitter. Like, splitter is, and you know, this, you know, seeing a lot of guys who throw it. It's a hard pitch to throw for strikes. Like, and granted, it was down a little bit this year, but this is the guy, you know, if he's running, you know, around a 60% strike rate with that pitch. If you average it out the last two seasons, there's not a lot of guys. I know from the splitters I've seen this year that can constantly land that in the zone that splitter is more like the get at, bury it down and out, get with pitch with it. So I mean, the secondary stuff is stand out. And as you said, if he's one of the, you know, the top pitching prospects in baseball, it's not often that you have the chance as an organization to add a talent like that who's going to come on a rookie scale deal. So the surplus value that he's going to provide to any team is just going to be insane. And the interesting part here is that something you were alluding to earlier is he can kind of pick wherever he wants to go and every team has a chance. And I think this is where the timing is going to matter. Whether he signs in the 2024 period or the 2025 period is going to determine the difference, you know, if the 2024 period, if he signs during that, the most money he can get is from the Dodgers. It's just over 2.5 million. After that, there's only four other three other teams who have over a million in slot and international pool remaining. The Giants, the Yankees and the Orioles, whereas if you, if he's, they push until 2025, there's obviously it opens it up to everyone and the numbers can get closer, you know, five, six, even 10 million if some teams are going to trade, you know, for an entire overage. So what do you kind of, where are you at with his kind of the signing process with him? And do you think like, it seems like a lot of people think he's going to go to the Dodgers. But what do you kind of think about that? So if he's posted prior to December 1st, he has to sign by December 15th. Yeah. And that's where the Dodgers have the most money. The Dodgers have the most money. They also have a lot of money free and available in 25 for what it's worth. Otani signed for about 2.1, I believe the Dodgers, they had 3.2 left in like April. I think they signed a couple of players and they're down to like 2.6 now. Yeah, they have 2.5, just over 2.5 right now. Yeah. And so if he signs for all that, it would be more than Otani got. And they would not be able to sign him to an extension, I think, until maybe like year 5 or 6. Yeah, MLB is going to be very, they're going to be watching this. They're not going to let any shenanigans go on someplace as well that JJ has explained that, you know, yeah, that's what happening. Now, if he's posted December 2nd, then he's got the 45 days. It's January 15th. Yeah, what's the theory here? I know you were teasing it earlier. You could potentially blow up some teams, you know, international pools. I think that he's not going to, I don't think he's going to sign for like 10 million. Yeah. I do think it's going to be more like three or four. And I just, I simply think because he's already linked up with this marketing agency that was involved, signed about a high school when he was, you know, the number one prospect entering that MPB draft in 2019, they were involved in the negotiations and the contract. I think that he is a marketing arm that's going to print money in the, not like Otani, but in a similar fashion to Otani as a marketing arm with all these contracts and everything else that he's going to be making upwards of $20 million a year anyway. Yeah, especially if he ends up with a big team. So he's not going to care. What they've leaked is that he may not want to go to a big market. We've heard some rumors previously that some of these, some Japanese players don't necessarily like to be on a team with a few older, more established Japanese veterans that sometimes they like to be in their own spot, that there's like some respect stuff, things like that that they have to adhere to. I don't know if that's culturally relevant because we've seen Yamamoto and Otani signed together. Yeah. Well, I feel like we heard the similar thing about Yamamoto that he would want to go and then he just didn't matter. Yeah, and we heard it about Senga and he has a close relationship with Darvish. Yeah. So maybe there's a chance that he goes to the Padres and he teams up with Darvish against Otani and Yamamoto. That'd be kind of awesome. I think like from a baseball interest standpoint, if I'm in the MLB offices in New York, that's where I want Sasaki to end up. I want him to end up there. I want him to end up in New York City. I don't want him to go to the Dodgers because I think the perception among fans is that it's bad for baseball. I don't care, the writer. I think it would be interesting. I think Superteams are good for sports. I think Superteams drive interest of people watching them simply to cheer against them. They've now won the World Series and it's not a Mickey Mouse one or if you want to say about 2020. So they're like, they're the alpha in the room. So I think if it is David in the Padres taken on Goliath and they can sign this guy and Darvish is under contract for a couple more years and he gets to play with his hero and is good buddy and he feels like the landing spot is a little easier. It's a West Coast team. I think that makes a lot of sense. I think if he's looking to go to a place where pitching development is is key. I think that really does put the Mariners back into the picture because I think they can go pound for pound with the Dodgers in terms of what their development is. And I think you can even argue they've been better at developing their top talents into starters. Yeah. They've also done a better job of keeping them healthy. I think it gives them an opportunity to trade somebody like Louis Castillo or something like that. Yeah, which those rumors are swirling. So yeah, for a bat. So I think like that's really interesting. We always hear that there is some interest with Japanese players and playing in Chicago for some reason. Texas has had a history of going out and signing those guys. I think there's so many teams that are in play and I thought that AL Central is really interesting because if he lands there, he can kind of change the way some of those teams are perceived that are on the come up, whether it was the Tigers or the Guardian. I was going to say, imagine how'd your team is done with Scooble and some stuff be at the top of your rotation. That was the one that I called out in the podcast and the royals would be another interesting one with like him and Reagan's and Waka and Seth Lugo, who have been the finalist. Seth, you Lugo? Yeah, Lugo was awesome this year. So like, and I think the same thing, like we talk about the Red Sox, bringing it back to the Red Sox. That would be interesting to see this guy land here because be another thing that would put you over the top in terms of the best system in baseball, which is what I think they probably are right now. It gives you that picture that you need, the young controllable picture that they've been dying defined. And you haven't spent a lot of money on pitching in the draft that this is a way. Up until this year. Yeah, this is a way that you can go in and drop a big amount of money on a potential front of the rotation right away, ready-made starter. That's going to be with you in this core over the next several years. And it's not going to break the bank and you can still go out and sign that other starter. You could still go out and sign Juan Soto. It's not cost prohibitive whatsoever. And I think that's the most important point, is that when it comes to the Red Sox, he fits their timeline perfectly. And it just fills the biggest hole in the system, which I think Luis Morales would have been in the conversation of being in the top three in the system if he was healthy, unfortunately he's not. So it took away. They don't have a pitching prospect like that. And Sasaki is just such a unique opportunity that, you know, you don't get, this is like basically having pick one one in the MLB draft just given to you, whoever signs him. Like, because I would say if he was in the MLB draft last season, he goes first, right? Is there even a question? Like Travis Pazana is a great player. But I mean, I think he goes first in the skines draft. We had him ranked above skines. And so you're talking about this guy, you can get him for all it is going to cost you is international bonus money. Like that just doesn't happen. That's it's something that is, I feel like it's, it's like a pretty seismic shift in the free agent landscape this offseason that this unicorn talent is coming over. And it's not going to cost you 300 million a sign up. It's going to cost you five million or whatever. Let's just say five million. And the hard part is though, I feel like we just have no idea what his priorities are. We have no idea. You know, as you said, is it going to be, Hey, can I go somewhere and make it my own team, you know, kind of blaze my own path? Do I want to go play with a bunch of other superstars? You know, we just, we just have no idea what his priorities are. And I think that's what makes it so fascinating is it's all going to be speculation until we start hearing how the process starts to play out for him. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's a great offseason story. You know, yeah. Oh, it's awesome. Early in the offseason to get the, get the, the hot stove going just because we've kind of had a couple of really boring, dead years and battle. It's late in the year off seasons where players get, get signed that at least this gives some intriguing interest. And I think teams will be active trying to, you know, especially if that posting doesn't happen. And from, you know, the cheap Alode Marines perspective, it makes no sense not to post them, to post them before December 2nd. Yeah. I mean, they're already, they already get costing themselves so much money. And by waiting, at least they can maybe get, you know, two, three million more, or, you know, allow him to go through the free agency process, right, which is something he may want to do, which is something his marketing agency might be encouraging him. Yeah. And well, they should, if they're smart, I would, I would take them on a tour of the U.S. Just get it over now. Teams to then get like, it's almost like the residue to get the, like the mechanism going of the off season, right? Where like, it's like all of a sudden, like, you know, you've greased the wheels and teams are now making moves in order to, you know, pull in bonus, pull money or whatever. So that they have, they have, you know, the ability to do some things. So I can't wait till the first bonus pool trade happens and the speculation starts watching, like, like the rocket is straight for like a million dollars in bonus, but whatever it's going to go to Colorado. Yeah. Colorado will be the one team that's like, yeah, we're going to pass. We'll watch him go to Colorado though. That'll be the point at great hikes. Like the scenery is beautiful there. I mean, I'm, I don't know. I'm just just throwing out there some good logic. Maybe he's a big hiker. Are you into legal weed deep fried bull testicles and great views? Do you like scenic overlays? No, it's, I don't think he's going to Colorado. But I think the other thing that I was just kind of thinking about was that by him coming, in terms of just Red Sox specifically, it does help them because it's, he's going to take up a spot of it on where every lands, even if it's not in Boston, he's going to take up a high-end SP spot that that team won't need to fill now via free agency or trade. And obviously the Red Sox are trying to do that. So I think just another player like that to the market could be beneficial to them even if they don't sign it because let's say he goes to the Dodgers. If he goes to the Dodgers, I'm going to guess that wouldn't put them off of signing someone like Max for either trading for Garrett Crochet because they already have 12 starters granted. Seven of them are coming back from major injuries. But I just think it will fill a spot somewhere of a player of a caliber that the Red Sox are trying to go out and get. Yeah. So I don't know. It's going to be a really interesting off season between that. Obviously, the Juan Soto sweepstakes are heating up. And I don't know. It's just, it was a very fun wrinkle. And I think it just, you know, as we said, it's not often that you have a chance to, you know, get a guy who might be the top overall prospect of baseball. Oh, and that's a lot. That's the part I want to end on. Can you, so JJ has done a great job of covering this, but so he's going to be PPI pick eligible, assuming he signs. So that's another benefit. So it's another benefit. That's crazy. So the team. Yeah, that's what it's about to say is the surplus value. It literally pays for itself. I would love to see like some teams internal like valuation of him of the surplus value his contract will bring because between the chance of the PPI pick the fact that he's going to be on a pre-arb deal than our, you know, his team control for six years and his bonus is going to be like less than what he's like, would we be surprised? Have you got a top 10 pick a bonus? Like I'm taking US draft. No, I mean, like he's, he's going to get paid like he's in the back end of the first round. That's what I mean. Like the surplus value there has to like break their charts. Like you're going to have to throw this one away because it's such an outlier when you're talking about like contract value. Yeah, unless somebody has no deals in the international market and they have the ability to like acquire up to like eight or nine million and do it. I think the max a team can get to is if you're in that tier one, like the highest, I think the max they can get to is like just under 12 million. Yeah. And like, I mean, maybe he wants that. But like, if you're coming, I look at it that if he's coming over right now and giving up this much money already, he's not going to care between, you know, three million and five million. I don't know what they're talking. Like, yeah, won't anticipate the angels would be the team that he would sign with. We thought it was the Mariners though. It was the Giants. We thought it was the Dodgers. We thought it was the Rangers or the Cubs. Yeah. You know, and then of course, then we kind of heard he wanted to be West Coast if you remember the process. I do. Yeah. I'm not going to end up with any New York teams. So yeah, I mean, you know, in terms of where I think he sits, it's probably one. Unfortunately, for Red Sox fans, he probably overtakes Roman Anthony. Not if he's with the Red Sox and they'll they could have the talk. It's with an asterisk. You know, I mean, he is a foreign professional. It's just he falls under the rookie guidelines and, you know, age in terms of how he's signing. So, he has to be viewed for us as a prospect. We didn't, you know, we won't, if he was 25, we wouldn't view him the same. Yeah. You know, he wouldn't be ranked on our prospect list, but he will be ranked. I already wrote up the report. He's going to be a 70 medium. So, it's going to be him and Roman Anthony, you know, maybe Christian Campbell. It's going to be like, those guys kind of battling it out. Jackson Job, he's ahead of Job, I think. Yeah. So, I think it's either one or two. I'd be shocked if he's not one. So, I think you can probably bet on that. I mean, it's hard to say no to a guy who's not, you know, 100 up to 103 with two, what? 65 secondaries, maybe. I think it's an 80 splitter. Yeah. We put a 60. We put a 65 in the slider. You had 80. I kind of want 70. Yeah. I kind of mean 70 on that. Like, I think it's a hard plus to, like, plus plus slider. Like, so we're rolling, like, seven with sweep. Only two and a half double plus pitches. Well, what a shame. I mean, yeah, it's going to be fascinating. And obviously, you know, stay with us all off season because I have a feeling is, until the Rokie Sasaki signs, that's going to be the number one name that I think people want to talk about when it comes to the pitching market because of just all the unique factors that are in play here. But yeah, that's going to do with Jeff today. I just wanted to say thank you to him for coming on, as always. Really, really fascinating insight into Rokie Sasaki and the pitch data and everything that's going to go on behind the scenes here. So thank you to Jeff. And I'll be back soon to talk a little bit about the AFL and a few other housekeeping items. So stay with the show. We're not ending here. But thanks, Jeff. Thank you. Welcome back to the socks, prospects.com podcast. Ian here just now, just finished up recording with Jeff. That was, I thought it was a really interesting interview. I got to talk a lot about Rokie Sasaki's stuff. And I think I hope everyone enjoyed it. And now just to wrap up the show, just going to talk a little bit about the AFL update is obviously it's, you know, the season out there is wrapping up the final, the final state side winner league, or final state side, I guess, affiliated ball for this season is going to wrap up it. The, it's been interesting, you know, the AFL continuum was obviously not the strongest in terms of names, but some guys are putting up some pretty decent performances. And it culminated with three players being named to the fall stars game, which is kind of like the showcase all-star game there. Three players who from the Red Sox who were named to were Brooks Brandon, Max Ferguson, and Danny Kerwin. Brandon up so far this season, he's hitting 309, 347, 456 with two home runs and 68 played appearances or excuse me, 68 at bats. Chris Clegg was out there and he was pretty impressed by what he's seen. And we talked about on last steps with him. Scouts have been really impressed with his power. You know, the other other aspects of his game still work in progress, but it's legit juice. And he, he got in the game and had a pair of hit lists, played appearances. Max Ferguson so far, he at 246, 363, 354 with one home run. So gets on base, not a lot of power, kind of like what we know with him. He's really good defender, super utility type. He, he was about, he got in the game at shortstop and he walked, obviously, and ended up scoring a run. So nice little cameo for him. Then finally, Danny Kerwin. Kerwin's an interesting one because he was, he was signed out of as a minor league free agent this offseason, or excuse me, this past season in April. And he had a solid year in Salem, you know, 69 and a one third innings, only gave up 54 hits, five home runs allowed, which, you know, kept them on the ballpark, 69 strikeout, 24 walks. So solid season. And he's got pretty good stuff. Like he's, and I think the thing that's been impressive with him and is if you look at his stats from the fall, he is still the walk guys. I think he's got one walk. Yeah, he's got 14 strikeouts and one walk in 10 and 2/3 innings. And so, you know, he's given up some hits in the zone, like 283 opponent average against, but if you can miss bats and you don't walk guys, like that's, there's things to work with there. And he's, you know, to me, he's someone who is going to keep an eye on for next season as a potential relief type because as we've kind of seen like relievers could come out of anywhere. And, you know, this was a guy who wasn't drafted, was playing indie ball. But the stuff has really taken a step forward and continued to pick up. And, you know, now he's like in the mid 90s, sweeper, you know, the kind of stuff that the Red Sox really look for. So, he got into the fall star's game and allowed one run and is ending a relief. He didn't actually, ironically, did walk two guys. But yeah, no, I think that he's a pretty interesting arm to keep an eye on next season. In terms of the other guys that didn't make the fall star's game, but performance wise, Cooper Adams has had a couple of rough outings. His ERA is around 10. Whip is close to two nine strikeouts, seven walks and 12 and a third innings. Zach Fogle has been very good out of the bullpen, eight and a third innings. ERA 1.08, whip 0.72 with 10 strikeouts and four walks. And, you know, he's, he's an interesting little lefty type, you know, funky delivery, decent stuff, kind of a weird arsenal in the sense that his change up is like low high 80s, low 90s, but a fastball is also only like 92 to 94. But, you know, lefty relievers as we've seen, like the Joe Jakes is at the work and get to the big leagues. It's a pretty, he's got a chance with the stuff he's got. Kaden Rose is 238, 351, 363 with two home runs in 80 at bats. He's played a lot, good to see him healthy out there, getting on base, you know, little, little pop. But I think the biggest thing for Rose is just getting healthy. He obviously missed a ton of time this year. He only got 91 at bats. So, good to see him out there, healthy. Connor Steinball has thrown only four innings, seven strikeouts, two walks, not give up a run. One, one, whip is one. And then Tyler Rubristine, seven and two, third innings, 352 ERA, 2.22 whip with six strikeouts and four walks. So, you know, it's just, he just needs innings. So I'm not really that worried about the performance because that's the most important thing is him just being healthy and just going out there and throwing on a consistent schedule because he's got to make up obviously for the missed time from Tommy John. But yeah, that's kind of it from the AFL. I believe the season wraps up in the next week or two. So, that'll be kind of the end of that. And then it's just going to be off season. We got some big, some big deadlines next week. We'll find out if Nick Pavetta is going to accept to reject the QO next Tuesday. It seems like he's obviously going to, it seems very likely he's going to reject it. And if so, Kudos to Craig Rezlo and their staff for reading that one well. I know that we were a little surprised when he got it. But as soon as it happened, kind of talking to people around the game, it made a lot more sense given where the market is headed. So, that was, if they can net a pick from that, it can really help offset the signing of another big free agent, which I like, even if it is going to cost them some money in the pool. But, you know, just having that pick still is a pretty big asset to get for just, you know, offering Nick Pavetta deal that he wasn't going to accept. So, we'll know that. That will be wrapped up next week, and then also rule five deadlines approaching. So, we'll have, and hopefully, there'll be some off-season movement to go. You know, there's a lot. We're hearing a lot of stuff. There's a lot of rumors out there. But we just need, you know, we need that first, the kind of the dam to start to break and some deals to actually happen. So far, there's just been nothing that exciting. You know, Travis Day, our node signed with the angels, takes a catcher off the board. But other than that, it's like Kyle Hendrix, guys like that. So, I think we're just, we're kind of in a waiting pattern, waiting for that first big move. And once that happens, obviously, if the Red Sox do anything major, if there's a major trade or anything, if they're able to go out, you know, maybe they use Willy or Bray, Marcelo Meyer, someone like that to acquire a young, controlled pitcher. Maybe they make the get our crochet deal, you know, there's just a lot of balls in play right now. And it's a really, really interesting time because nobody's off the board yet. So, you can kind of dream, you can kind of, you can kind of plan the off season in going in many different directions. And I think once, you know, that first big domino falls, then that's when things will really get rolling. But until then, just kind of a waiting room. But yeah, that's going to wrap it up for this episode of the podcast. Thank you all for listening. And of course, thanks to our podcast producer, Daniel Fox, you can follow the site on social media at stocks prospects. You can follow me at Ian Kundell. And make sure to also follow us on Blue Sky. We're an hour there. We're going to be posting there. It's more too. So we'll be on Twitter still also, but definitely follow our Blue skies. I believe my handle, my handle is the same thing. It's just Eddie and Kundell. The website is the same thing at Sox prospects. So you can find us there. And of course, thank you to the Lord of Bothies for our intro and outro music. You can find their stuff wherever you get your tunes. And thank you to all of our supporters on patreon.com/socks prospects. This episode, we want to shout out Dakota Randall, Jeff Smith, Carl Meyer, Jose Lopez, Matthew Levine, Zachary Menchini, Jay Harrington, Josh Ball, Tom Coitzer, and James Van Poth. Thank you as all as for your support. And we'll be back in your eardrums soon with more of the best coverage of the Red Sox system. Thanks for listening, everyone. Are you a die hard packers fan? Then you need the packernet podcast in your life. To an end daily for the latest packers news, analysis, and insights from every angle. We've got multiple shows covering everything from game breakdowns to roster updates. Don't forget our fan favorite call in show, Packernet After Dark. That's right, you call in and talk about whatever you want, because here it's all about you and your passion for the packers. So what are you waiting for? Subscribe to the Packernet podcast today and never miss a beat.
