Stanford University slugger Rintaro Sasaki will sign with the Miami Marlins, spurning a far more lucrative contract to play in Japan in favor of pursuing his Major League Baseball dream, sources said July 15.<\/p>\n
The decision resolves months of speculation for the 21-year-old infielder, who was the first-round draft pick of the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks in October before the Marlines selected him in the eighth round of the MLB draft on July 12.<\/p>\n
Sasaki is now poised to accept a signing bonus with a slot value of $239,200 (approximately 39 million yen).<\/p>\n
As the Hawks\u2019 top pick, he was positioned to receive Nippon Professional Baseball\u2019s maximum rookie deal of 100 million yen plus 50 million yen in incentives.<\/p>\n
An alumnus of Hanamaki Higashi High School\u2014the same as the Los Angeles Dodgers\u2019 superstar Shohei Ohtani\u2014Sasaki set a Japanese record with 140 high school home runs.<\/p>\n
He bypassed Japan\u2019s pro league after graduation to attend Stanford, stating that he wanted to \u201cexpand the possibilities in my life\u201d by balancing academics and baseball.<\/p>\n
In his sophomore season with the Cardinal this year, he hit .262 with 16 home runs and 47 RBIs in 54 games.<\/p>\n
The intense interest in Sasaki was evident in early July, when SoftBank executives offered him the team\u2019s coveted jersey number 1.<\/p>\n
A representative for Sasaki\u2019s management told reporters on July 13 that he was weighing three options\u2014the Hawks, the Marlins, or returning to Stanford\u2014and that \u201cnothing has been decided yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the representative, Sasaki watched the MLB draft from a hotel in his hometown of Hanamaki, Iwate Prefecture.<\/p>\n
When the Marlins\u2019 pick was announced, \u201cFor a moment his face seemed to break into a smile, but it immediately returned to a sharp, serious expression.\u201d<\/p>\n
The deadline for Sasaki to sign with the Marlins is 5 p.m. Eastern Time on July 27.<\/p>\n
His negotiating rights with the SoftBank Hawks expire on July 31.<\/p>\n
A formal announcement is expected soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stanford University slugger Rintaro Sasaki will sign with the Miami Marlins, spurning a far more lucrative contract to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":753126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2395],"tags":[2559,5,2372,1816,778,58,4171,4,169,185],"class_list":["post-753125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami-marlins","tag-asahi-shimbun","tag-baseball","tag-japan","tag-marlins","tag-miami","tag-miami-marlins","tag-miamimarlins","tag-mlb","tag-news","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116928510922979302","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/753126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}