Buster Posey’s first season leading the San Francisco Giants’ baseball operations has been a busy one.
As president of baseball operations, he landed shortstop Willy Adames with the biggest deal in team history at $182 million. He managed to lure future hall-of-famer Justin Verlander on a one-year deal in the hope that he can bounce back from a terrible 2024.
He’s made plenty of deals to improve the team’s depth. He’s also been open about his desire to pursue one other free agent — Roki Sasaki.
“He’s a tremendous talent,” Posey said in October. “He’s 23 years old. It’s fun to dream on. It’s fun to think about him at Oracle Park and him pitching deep into a game late in the year, the place rocking. We’d be over the moon to add a guy like that.”
Well, the rubber is about to meet the road, so to speak.
Wednesday is the first day of Major League Baseball’s international signing period. All 30 teams can begin spending their allocated international bonus pool money on young players, mostly from the Caribbean and South America, who are now 16 years old and eligible to sign.
The day is usually a wave of contract agreements. In many cases, it’s the culmination of months, even years, of building relationships with young players.
But this Wednesday will be like no other international signing period because of Sasaki.
He is 23 years old and doesn’t meet the requirement to be considered a traditional free agent from Japan, like pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto of an offseason ago. Because Sasaki is being treated as an international free agent, MLB teams are only allowed to use their bonus pool money to sign him.
That’s leveled the playing field. But the Giants are one of seven teams that have reportedly met personally with Sasaki, meetings that happened last month in Los Angeles.
The Giants have just $5.146 million in bonus pool money, tied for the lowest of any team. They can give all of that to Sasaki if they wish. San Francisco also has one other way to raise more money. MLB rules allow teams to trade for up to 60% of their bonus pool money. So, the Giants could push it to close to $8 million.
Baseball America wrote about the situation this weekend. MLB insiders believe that the team that signs him will likely spend its entire bonus pool.
And, because many international signings happen on the first day, it should become clear which teams know they’re out on Sasaki and which ones believe they still have a chance.
If the Giants either hold steady on Wednesday without a significant international signing or start to make deals for international bonus pool money, then it means Posey and his team believe they have a chance to sign him. And it’s a market that could move fast.
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