Between Roki and a hard place

It’s less than 11 days until the start of spring training, and unless the Lotte Marines have decided to keep Roki Sasaki’s contract signing a secret–to prevent him from facing questions from the media–one assumes he has not come to terms for the 2024 season.

While the former is possible, given the controversial nature of his offseason, the latter makes sense from the Marines’s side if they feel they are caught between a Roki and a hard place.

Roki Sasaki and the revolution

Assume for an instant, that Roki Sasaki DOES have the Marines by the balls, with a contractual obligation that the club to post him at a time of his choosing, what would you do if you were the team?

If such an obligation does exist, the Marines situation would appear to be like that of Peter Lorre’s character Joel Cairo in his first encounter with Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade in “The Maltese Falcon.”

First, I’ll explain below why I firmly believe Sasaki is the one holding the posting-demand whip hand, and after that, how the Marines don’t have to just take it and like it, but can play hardball in a way no Japanese club has in ages.

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Kuroda, Tanishige in Hall of Fame

On Thursday, pitcher Hiroki Kuroda and catcher Motonobu Tanishige were inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame on the Player’s Division ballot voted on by eligible members of the media.

I analyzed the career value and peak value of this year’s candidates in December, when I worked out my own ballot. Kuroda was easily the most qualified pitcher among those on the ballot, and his career fits in nicely with previous pitchers voted into the Hall of Fame.

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writing & research on Japanese baseball

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