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2 years ago

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CHRIS HATCHER REMEMBERS the first time he knew Kirby Smart was going to be a great defensive coach.

Hatcher, the current coach at Samford, was hiring his first staff at Valdosta State in 2000 and had used up much of his salary pool for assistants before hiring a secondary coach. His defensive coordinator, Will Muschamp, who was pulling down a cool $31,000, suggested they use their last $8,000 to hire someone he trusted.

Muschamp reached out to Smart, who had played with him as a defensive back at Georgia and finished his career with 13 interceptions. But three of those 13 jumped out to Hatcher.

“I knew who Kirby was because I was the quarterback coach at Kentucky for Tim Couch, and I think Kirby picked him off like three times in a game,” Hatcher said of Smart’s role in the Dawgs’ 23-13 win over Kentucky in 1997. “We knew we were hiring Kirby no matter what, because we just had that money left, but Will and I decided that it’d be good for him to come down, put the suit on and interview and do it right.”

So he put his new candidate in front of the whiteboard and asked him to diagram the Georgia base defense Kirby had run as a player.

“He got out there and he drew up the diagrams and he backed up,” Hatcher said. “He’s sweating, and Will and I are laughing, and I finally said, ‘Coach, that looks good, but if you play with 11 men, you got a better chance of stopping ’em.'”

Smart, who had left a player off, nervously drew the last guy in and apologized. (For the record, Hatcher knows Muschamp tells the story with 12 men instead of 10. While they both agree Kirby was off by one guy, Hatcher insists the way he remembers is correct.)

“I told everybody, if he was confident in stopping ’em with 10, I was like, man, there’s no telling what he’d do if he played with 11,” Hatcher said.

Hatcher knows Smart will need all 11 on Monday night when Georgia takes on upstart TCU for the College Football Playoff National Championship (7:30 ET, Monday, ESPN/ESPN App). Because he’s also one of the guys most responsible for teaching the Air Raid offense to Horned Frogs coach Sonny Dykes.

For a five-year period from 1997 to 2002, Hatcher lived with Dykes for three years, then worked with Smart for two. Hatcher and Dykes joined Hal Mumme’s first Kentucky staff, then, after landing a head-coaching job at his alma mater, Valdosta State, Hatcher hired Smart and Muschamp to their first jobs, where he worked with Smart for two seasons.

He’s the only man who can say he sold pizzas with Dykes and built lockers with Smart when they were all broke coaches.

“They’re both intense, but in very different ways,” Hatcher said. “Sonny’s very laid-back, got a great sense of humor. Kirby can talk smack with the best of ’em.”

HATCHER ARRIVED AT Kentucky a few months before Dykes. He was a star quarterback under Mumme at Valdosta, where he won the Harlon Hill Award, the Division II equivalent of the Heisman Trophy.

He was ready to hit the ground running coaching Couch, who would go on to become the No. 1 pick in the 1999 NFL draft. Dykes, who had previously been a jack-of-all-trades assistant at Navarro Junior College in Texas, was considering getting out of coaching because he was young, single and broke. Then his dad, legendary Texas Tech coach Spike Dykes, suggested he call Mumme.

Mumme hired him over the phone, and Dykes showed up a few months later once a graduate assistant spot opened up. He had nowhere to live, and Hatcher, who was 23, didn’t either. They didn’t know each other, but Hatcher said he’d once seen Spike speak at a clinic and “was mesmerized.” So he couldn’t wait to meet the younger Dykes.

They rented a house but didn’t have any furniture or money. Hatcher said they bought mattresses from a flea market and then, he claims, Dykes hatched a plan one summer when they were working as football camp staffers to supplement their income.

Hatcher was the camp director. Dykes, his assistant, saw dollar signs when he realized Tubby Smith was having his basketball camps during the same time, and other sports like volleyball did, too, therefore there were thousands of hungry kids staying overnight in the dorms in Lexington.

“Sonny’s a hustler, always worked hard,” Hatcher said. “I had an ’84 Ford Ranger five-speed that my dad sold me for $1 when I graduated from high school. He said, ‘You know, instead of just selling pizzas to the football campers, why don’t we just load up your truck, park it in the middle of the quad and every night we’ll just sell pizza?'”

Dykes didn’t deny it, instead portraying himself as a savvy businessman.

“There were 8 slices in there,” he said. “We made ’em a hell of a deal. You could pay $1 a slice, or we’d sell ’em the whole pizza for $10.”

“I had a South Georgia education,” Hatcher said. “That deal on the price, that was that West Texas education coming through. That was Sonny’s idea.”

The two said they’d go door to door in the dorms the rest of the night selling the rest.

“We were rolling in the dough,” Hatcher said. “You would have thought we were millionaires out there selling all those pizzas. Straight cash money back in the day.”

Dykes and Hatcher, who didn’t have offices, found an old storage room — “That thing was nasty, with blocking dummies probably from when Bear Bryant coached there,” Hatcher recalls — bought desks from a surplus store and created their own little room, adding spots for the student workers.

“We were living the good life, man,” Hatcher said. “We did all the grunt work, but we didn’t have all the pressure that goes along with game day. Sonny and I had it made back there, buddy. We had our own desks; all the volunteers and student assistants kind of felt like they owed us because we got them offices as well. We were living large back then.”

MIKE LEACH GOT the Texas Tech head-coaching job in 2000 after a year as offensive coordinator at Oklahoma, and brought Sonny with him, ironically to replace Spike. Meanwhile, Hatcher landed his own head-coaching gig that same year back at Valdosta, where Smart was once again back to coaching with 11 players.

Now, there was a more pressing issue.

The locker room was a sad state of affairs. But a place like Valdosta State wasn’t in the facilities arms race. If the football staff wanted new lockers, it was on the staff to figure it out.

“We had a guy donate some wood,” Hatcher said. “A young coach on our staff and his dad were carpenters on the side. So they built a template and we did it assembly-line style and everybody had their own job.”

He said Smart had a key role.

“You had to high-gloss [paint] the finished product to make it shiny,” Hatcher said. “Kirby was our high-gloss guy.”

Smart and Muschamp are known for their fiery temperaments. Hatcher recalls it all coming into focus when the three of them — Hatcher was just 26, Muschamp 25 and Smart 24 — would do anything competitive, especially basketball.

Smart could poke and poke and poke and get Muschamp fired up. “He could back it up on the court, too,” Hatcher said.

One day, Smart got Muschamp so angry, he fired the basketball off the gym wall and stormed out. “We didn’t see him for the rest of the day, so Kirby and I had a good time with that for a while,” Hatcher said.

But they all worked hard, too. Muschamp used to paint stripes on the field on Sundays to get ready for practice before he left Valdosta after one year to join Nick Saban’s staff at LSU. Smart, after only one year as a coach, became the defensive coordinator, with a big raise from $8,000 up to about $30,000.

That season, Valdosta went 12-2 and had the No. 2 defense in the country. One of those two losses came in the Division II national championship game.

Now, Muschamp, who has been a head coach at Florida and South Carolina, is an assistant for Smart as the Dawgs try to win a second consecutive title.

“When I hire young coaches, I always tell them there’s no job too small,” Hatcher said. “Back in the day, these are the things that we had to do. Here’s two coaches from the same staff, Kirby and Will, playing for the national championship, that used to paint the field and high-gloss lockers.”

DYKES AND SMART say they learned a tremendous amount when working for Hatcher, who is 172-95 in 24 years as a head coach and won a national championship at Valdosta in 2004 during a 76-12 run there. This year, he led Samford to its first outright conference title since 1936.

In September, before Georgia beat Hatcher and Samford 33-0, Smart said what he learned from Hatcher was how to use his charisma and how he formed strong relationships.

“His disposition with the team was always confident,” Smart said. “[He] just believed we could win every game. He embodied that. He embraced that. His players love playing for him because of the energy he exudes.”

Smart was asked at SEC media days this year what he remembers most about his time with Hatcher.

“How long you got?” he said, smiling. “Because I could tell you about a 20-hour bus ride I took to Arkadelphia. I could tell you about Texarkana. I could tell you about all the places I went in Mississippi that I didn’t know existed. But that’s where I cut my teeth as a coach. There were some really long bus rides. We built our own lockers.

“I learned a lot while I worked at Valdosta State. You only learn trial by fire. And I certainly appreciate Coach Hatcher for giving me that opportunity.”

For Dykes, the lessons he learned from his time with Hatcher are especially important this week as he attempts to take on an incredibly talented Georgia team. Because, Dykes said, he was a skeptic that Kentucky could ever take on the top of the SEC, and Hatcher convinced him anything is possible.

“I didn’t know anything about the Air Raid and what it entailed,” Dykes said. “So my indoctrination really was Chris, just kind of sitting around the house talking about it. The one thing that matters is that you’re armed with this tool that was going to enable you to climb the highest mountain.”

Dykes said it’s a tribute to his time with Hatcher that he has been able to get TCU to this point this quickly by employing what he learned there.

“It took me a while to become a believer. Chris’ confidence rubbed off on everybody,” Dykes said. “Mike Leach rubbed off on me. Hal rubbed off on me. All the guys that were there, that had been in the offense for a while, all had this unrelenting confidence that it was going to work and it’s going to work against whoever. It didn’t really matter who you’re playing against.”

Dykes added after the Horned Frogs’ 51-46 upset of Michigan in the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl that he was thinking a lot of Leach and his dad in the final seconds of the game. Inevitably, he’ll lean on those lessons from his early days again Monday.

“Chris was just one of those guys: He’s undersized, wasn’t a great athlete, won the Harlon Hill, was a great player. I remember looking at Chris going, how in the world did he do it?” Dykes said. “And then once I got to know him, he just had so much confidence and belief in the system and himself and how if you have this unrelenting, undying belief, people will follow you. When you have a leader that has that, it can be contagious and permeates a whole program. That’s kind of what the magic of it is.”

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Ohtani, Dodgers to star in 4 early SNB broadcasts

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4 hours ago

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January 15, 2025

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Ohtani, Dodgers to star in 4 early SNB broadcasts

  • Associated Press

Jan 15, 2025, 09:34 AM ET

BRISTOL, Conn. — Shohei Ohtani and the defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers will be featured on four of ESPN’s first 10 “Sunday Night Baseball” broadcasts along with a March 27 appearance on the sport’s main Opening Day.

ESPN said Wednesday it will broadcast the Dodgers’ Sunday night games against the Chicago Cubs (April 13), Atlanta Braves (May 4), New York Mets (May 25) and New York Yankees (June 1).

The Dodgers appeared in the maximum five Sunday night games last year, as did the Yankees, Braves and Boston Red Sox.

Los Angeles opens the season on March 18 and 19 against the Chicago Cubs in Tokyo, and most other teams start play March 27. ESPN’s doubleheader that day features exclusive coverage of the Yankees hosting Milwaukee and the Dodgers at home against Detroit. The March 27 appearances don’t count against each team’s five-game ESPN limit.

ESPN’s Sunday night games started in 1990.

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ESPN’s 2024 All-America team: The top players at every position

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January 15, 2025

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ESPN's 2024 All-America team: The top players at every position

  • Chris Low, ESPN Senior WriterJan 15, 2025, 07:00 AM ET

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    • College football reporter
    • Joined ESPN.com in 2007
    • Graduate of the University of Tennessee

With schools playing as many as 16 games this season in the first year of the 12-team College Football Playoff format, we waited a little longer than usual to unveil our 2024 ESPN All-America team.

Postseason performances should matter, especially when you’re talking about up to four games.

Headlining the team is Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter, who turned in All-America performances at three spots. (We limited him to one position on our list.) The receiver/cornerback was the cornerstone of a Colorado team that won nine games in 2024 after suffering through seven straight losing seasons.

Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty and Notre Dame safety Xavier Watts are the only repeat selections from last season. Ohio State and Texas each have three first-team selections to lead the way, and Ohio State receiver Jeremiah Smith is the only true freshman on the team.

OFFENSE

Ward made the most of his one season at Miami after transferring from Washington State. A Heisman Trophy finalist, he tied for the FBS lead by accounting for 44 touchdowns (39 passing, 4 rushing and 1 receiving) on the ACC’s No. 1 offense and threw just seven interceptions in 454 pass attempts. Ward, who started his career in the FCS ranks at Incarnate Word, had 10 games with at least 300 passing yards and set a Miami record with 4,313 passing yards.

Second team: Dillon Gabriel, Oregon

The mere fact that Jeanty made a run at Barry Sanders’ hallowed NCAA rushing record of 2,628 yards tells you everything you need to know about Jeanty’s 2024 season. He led the country with 2,601 rushing yards and scored 30 touchdowns. Jeanty was the Heisman Trophy runner-up to Hunter, and defenses aligned to stop him all season. Even so, he entered the Fiesta Bowl with 1,882 yards after contact, according to Pro Football Focus, which was more than any other FBS player had in total rushing yards.

Second team: Dylan Sampson, Tennessee

Everybody in and around Arizona State’s program already knew Skattebo was an elite running back, but he showed the rest of the country in his two postseason outings. Skattebo finished second to Jeanty with 1,711 rushing yards and had 21 touchdowns. He also caught 45 passes, and in the Big 12 championship game win over Iowa State and playoff loss to Texas, he rolled up 450 all-purpose yards and accounted for six touchdowns, one a 42-yard pass in the Sun Devils’ double-overtime loss to Texas.

Second team: Kaleb Johnson, Iowa

Ohio State offensive coordinator Chip Kelly, who has been a head coach at the NFL and collegiate levels, said he has never had a receiver like Smith, with his blend of size, speed and ability to track the ball in tight coverage. A true freshman, the 6-foot-3, 225-pound Smith was uncoverable in the Buckeyes’ first two playoff games, with four touchdown catches and 290 receiving yards. He’s tied for third nationally with 14 touchdown receptions and averages 17.3 yards per catch.

Second team: Tetairoa McMillan, Arizona

Nash is the first San José State player to be named a consensus All-American. The 6-3, 195-pound redshirt senior became the fourth player in FBS history to earn the receiving triple crown in the regular season with 104 catches, 1,382 receiving yards and 16 touchdown catches. Nash had 39 catches of 15 yards or longer, according to Pro Football Focus, and 71 catches resulting in a first down, leading the nation in both categories. He also threw two touchdown passes this season.

Second team: Xavier Restrepo, Miami

Warren came to Penn State as a quarterback, and that athleticism was on full display in his sensational redshirt senior season. He caught 104 passes for 1,233 yards and 13 combined touchdowns (8receiving, 4 rushing and 1 passing). The 6-6, 261-pound Warren became the first tight end in Big Ten history to catch 100 passes in a season and won the John Mackey Award as the top tight end in college football.

Second team: Harold Fannin Jr., Bowling Green

Despite a left ankle injury that sidelined him for the SEC championship game, Banks was the centerpiece of a Texas offensive line that paved the way for one of the most balanced offenses in the country. The Longhorns were one of six FBS teams to average more than 275 passing yards and 160 rushing yards per game. The 6-4, 320-pound junior won the Lombardi Award this season as the nation’s best collegiate lineman and has been a starter at left tackle since his true freshman season.

Second team: Wyatt Milum, West Virginia

Jackson’s versatility has been a huge part of Ohio State’s run to the national championship game. He returned for his senior season after earning All-Big Ten honors at left guard each of the previous two seasons. He continued his stellar play at guard through the first half of this season but moved to left tackle after Josh Simmons suffered a season-ending knee injury.

Second team: Willie Lampkin, North Carolina

Florida’s offensive line improved steadily in the latter part of the 2024 season, when the Gators won their last four games, and Slaughter’s play was a big reason. A redshirt junior who has announced he will return for the 2025 season, Slaughter allowed just one sack and one quarterback hit in 728 snaps in 2024, according to Pro Football Focus.

Second team: Cooper Mays, Tennessee

Booker was a powerful blocker in the run game during all three of his seasons at Alabama and was a two-year starter at left guard. He also started one game this season at left tackle. Booker recorded a team-high 87 knockdown blocks and didn’t allow a sack in 715 snaps, according to Pro Football Focus. He declared for the NFL draft following the Crimson Tide’s bowl game.

Second team: Bill Katsigiannis, Army

From the time he stepped foot on campus, Campbell was a fixture on LSU’s offensive line at left tackle, and this season, he played every offensive snap (866) in 11 of LSU’s 12 games. Campbell shared the Jacobs Trophy as the SEC’s top blocker with Texas’ Kelvin Banks Jr. Campbell is headed to the NFL after three seasons in Baton Rouge and is rated as the No. 2 tackle in the draft by ESPN’s Mel Kiper.

Second team: Josh Conerly Jr., Oregon

It might be a while before college football sees another iron man like Hunter, who played a staggering 1,440 snaps this season. In addition to playing more than 650 snaps on both offense and defense, he even played some on special teams — talk about an all-purpose player! Hunter tied for fourth nationally with 96 catches and ranked second with 15 touchdown receptions in winning the Biletnikoff Award as the country’s top receiver and led Colorado on defense with four interceptions and 11 pass breakups.

Second team: Desmond Reid, Pittsburgh

DEFENSE

Carter played through a painful shoulder injury in Penn State’s playoff semifinal loss to Notre Dame and still managed a sack. He led all FBS players with 23.5 tackles for loss, including 12 sacks. The 6-3, 252-pound junior moved from linebacker to edge rusher this season and established himself as one of the most dynamic defenders in the country. He had four games with multiple sacks and is projected to be one of the top defenders taken in the 2025 NFL draft.

Second team: Kyle Kennard, South Carolina

The defensive front was Michigan’s strength, and it was dominant in the upset win over Ohio State in the regular-season finale. Graham was the rock of that unit and a disrupter in the interior against both the run and pass. He had 7.5 tackles for loss, 3.5 sacks and 26 pressures and is headed to the NFL, where he’s projected by ESPN’s Mel Kiper to be the top defensive tackle taken in the 2025 draft.

Second team: Rylie Mills, Notre Dame

After transferring from Texas A&M, Nolen had his best season at Ole Miss. He’s big (6-3, 305 pounds) and has great burst. Nolen led all SEC defenders with 12 tackles for loss in league games and is the kind of interior pass rusher all defenses covet. And as a run stopper, he was ranked second among all interior defensive linemen, according to Pro Football Focus.

Second team: Derrick Harmon, Oregon

Ezeiruaku blossomed as a senior and leaves BC as one of the top defensive players in school history. At 6-2 and 247 pounds, Ezeiruaka was a pass-rushing dynamo with 16.5 sacks to rank second among FBS players. He was third nationally with 20.5 tackles for loss en route to winning ACC Defensive Player of the Year honors and the Ted Hendricks Award as college football’s top defensive end.

Second team: Jack Sawyer, Ohio State

The Butkus Award winner as the nation’s top linebacker, Walker is the third Georgia player to win the award since 2017. He’s a fierce tackler wherever he lines up and led the Bulldogs with 10.5 tackles for loss. Walker played more snaps at inside linebacker than he did rushing the passer, but he still finished with 34 quarterback pressures, according to Pro Football Focus.

Second team: Jihaad Campbell, Alabama

One of the best stories in college football, Dolac started his career at Buffalo as a walk-on, then missed most of last season because of a shoulder injury before transferring to Utah State for a semester and going through spring practice. But he knew he belonged closer to home and returned to Buffalo to have a huge senior season. He led the nation with 168 total tackles and led all linebackers with 18.5 tackles for loss to go along with five interceptions.

Second team: Jay Higgins, Iowa

The epitome of a do-it-all linebacker, Hill went from being one of the best true freshmen in 2023 to one of the best defenders in the country this season. And, yes, he has another season remaining at Texas. The 6-3, 235-pound sophomore led the Longhorns with 113 total tackles and tied for fourth among FBS linebackers with 16.5 tackles for loss. He also had four forced fumbles, a fumble recovery and an interception.

Second team: Danny Stutsman, Oklahoma

Barron was already widely viewed as one of the top cornerbacks in college football but only raised his stock in helping limit Ohio State star receiver Jeremiah Smith to one catch for 3 yards in the Longhorns’ playoff semifinal loss at the Cotton Bowl. Barron, a 5-11, 200-pound redshirt senior, was the Thorpe Award winner as the best defensive back in college football and tied for the team lead in a talented secondary with five interceptions.

Second team: Jermod McCoy, Tennessee

In his second season at Cal after transferring from UNLV, Williams led all FBS players with seven interceptions and tied for third with 16 passes defended. He finished his college career with 14 interceptions and scored touchdowns this season on an 80-yard kickoff return in the opener against UC Davis and a 40-yard interception return against Cam Ward and Miami in a 39-38 loss to the Hurricanes.

Second team: D’Angelo Ponds, Indiana

Watts has been everything you could ask for in the back end of the Notre Dame defense. He erases mistakes, makes big plays in big moments and raises the game of everybody around him. The 6-foot, 203-pound redshirt senior leads all FBS safeties with six interceptions and is second on his team with 74 total tackles. He has 13 interceptions over his past two seasons and will go down as one of the best safeties in Notre Dame history.

Second team: Malaki Starks, Georgia

There’s no shortage of talent on the Ohio State defense, and adding Downs in the transfer portal helped spur the Buckeyes to the national championship game. He has uncanny instincts and is a force against both the run and pass. The 6-foot, 205-pound sophomore was a Thorpe Award finalist after earning Shaun Alexander Award honors as the national freshman of the year in his first season at Alabama. Downs ranks third on his team with 76 total tackles, including 7.5 for loss, and has two interceptions.

Second team: Michael Taaffe, Texas

SPECIAL TEAMS

Zvada came to Ann Arbor by way of Arkansas State and kicked his way into Michigan history in just one season. His winning 21-yard field goal in the final minute gave the Wolverines their fourth straight victory over rival Ohio State, and he was money all season for the Maize and Blue. Zvada was 21-of-22 on field goal attempts and made all seven of his tries from 50 yards or longer.

Second team: Kenneth Almendares, Louisiana

The Trojans led the country in net punting, and Czaplicki’s ability to keep opposing offenses backed up against their own goal line was a big part of USC’s improvement on defense. Czaplicki, the Ray Guy award winner as the nation’s best punter, averaged 47.8 yards per punt, and opponents returned only 13 of his kicks. He had just one touchback all season, and 25 of his 43 punts were downed inside the 20-yard line.

Second team: Alex Mastromanno, Florida State

Shanks did a little bit of everything for UAB. The redshirt freshman led the nation in punt return yards (329) and punt return average (20.6), and he returned two punts for touchdowns, including a 58-yarder against Tulsa; he accounted for 311 all-purpose yards and four TDs in the game. Shanks also tied for the team lead with 62 catches and racked up 656 receiving yards to go with six touchdown receptions.

Second team: Rayshawn Pleasant, Tulane

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Dodgers the favorites? The next Darvish … or Clemens? What we know as we await Roki Sasaki’s decision

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6 hours ago

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January 15, 2025

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Dodgers the favorites? The next Darvish ... or Clemens? What we know as we await Roki Sasaki's decision

  • Multiple Contributors

Jan 13, 2025, 07:00 AM ET

Happy Roki Sasaki Week!

After announcing his intention to come to MLB at the start of the 2024-25 offseason, the 23-year-old Japanese free agent immediately became the most coveted pitcher available this winter thanks to his combination of talent and age, and the parameters of his contract.

With the 2025 international free agent signing period opening Jan. 15 and Sasaki’s posting window closing on Jan. 23, we could find out where Sasaki is headed as soon as Wednesday.

Because Sasaki decided to come to the majors before his 25th birthday, he is limited to a minor league deal with a signing bonus coming from a team’s international bonus pool (capped at just over $7.5 million). That makes the emerging ace a rare free agent star every team can afford to sign.

As we wait for Sasaki’s destination to come into focus, we asked our MLB experts what makes him so good, which major league pitchers he reminds us of, and which teams seem most likely to land him.

Monday update: Sasaki plans to sign with either the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres or Toronto Blue Jays at some point over the next week or so, sources told ESPN, with a cadre of big-name teams informed in recent days they are no longer in consideration.

What makes Sasaki such a coveted free agent?

Bradford Doolittle: He’s young, accomplished and with measurable tools that might make him baseball’s top prospect right now. But he’s not a prospect in the “maybe he’ll be ‘X’ if he reaches his ceiling” but one that’s already been successful in a high-level league and can slide into a big league rotation. A limited workload threshold, for now, is the only thing that’s really holding back Sasaki’s 2025 projection. With his full collection of team control seasons intact, there is no risk to signing him. And as good as he is now, he has room to grow in terms of his arsenal and how he fills out physically. You just don’t get a combination of factors all lining up like this, not the least of which Sasaki was so anxious to make the jump that he was willing to make max earnings a secondary factor.

Buster Olney: As we’ve seen with Yoshinobu Yamamoto and with Juan Soto — as we’ve witnessed all the way back to Alex Rodriguez — excellence at a young age is everything. Sasaki is expected to be a high-ceiling talent already at 23, and the team that lands him will have years of control while paying him relative pennies.

Kiley McDaniel: In describing his client’s upcoming potential nine-figure deal to me this winter, an agent underlined why he was confident that would happen, even if he had a down year, by saying: “age is a hack.” Rosters are getting younger, thus teams have more money to spend, but don’t want to offer long-term deals to older players, so they are (generally) seeking short-term free agent deals or trades for players with a year or two of control. That means long-term deals are generally acceptable to a large swath of teams only when they can land a standout young star still in his peak years. (like the Red Sox chasing Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Juan Soto, extending Rafael Devers, but not offering huge money to any older players). Sasaki could be under team control for his entire peak of a bona fide ace, at a price every team can afford: a true unicorn of an opportunity for all 30 teams.

David Schoenfield: He is entering his age-23 season and it’s not a stretch to say he has the potential to be the best starter in baseball. In four years in Japan, he has a 2.02 ERA, averaging 11.4 strikeouts per nine. He has hit 102 mph and is 6-foot-3 and athletic. You can argue that he’s right up there on the Stephen Strasburg/Paul Skenes scale as a pitching prospect, except he has already dominated as a professional.

Which current or former MLB pitcher does he remind you of on the mound?

Schoenfield: With his power fastball/splitter combo, I think of two former MLB greats: Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling. There are certainly some similarities as well to Shohei Ohtani, although Ohtani slowly ramped down his splitter usage and didn’t use it much in 2022-23, going more often to his sweeper. In Japan in 2024, Sasaki induced a 57% whiff rate on his splitter, which would have ranked second in MLB behind Reds (now Yankees) reliever Fernando Cruz.

Doolittle: I don’t know that there is any one guy. The splitter kind of reminds me of the one Logan Gilbert throws, one with a spin rate so low it’s kind of freaky to watch in slow motion. The easy, heavy, hard stuff he offers kind of reminds me of Kevin Brown, only with a different fastball. The thing that’s most exciting about Sasaki is that it’s hard to call him the next so-and-so. He’s his own thing, and novelty is a great and too-rare thing in sports these days.

McDaniel: There isn’t a perfect comp, and Sasaki is still changing as a pitcher, so I’ll point out some players with qualities that are similar. Hunter Greene had a similar combination of arm speed and hype at the same age, along with some questions on his fastball shape and breaking ball quality. Obviously, Sasaki’s standout splitter has a number of comps to former NPB pitchers but only a handful of U.S.-born players, such as Clemens and Schilling. The total package (power fastball, slider, and splitter-ish offspeed pitch) is similar to Paul Skenes’, though Sasaki’s command and fourth and fifth pitch are areas he’ll need to address to have a chance to truly stand up to Skenes’ MLB debut.

Buster Olney: He reminds me of Yu Darvish, with his build and his rangy athleticism. He looks like he’ll have an ability to make adjustments, as needed. Darvish is known for being able to mimic the deliveries of other pitchers, and watching Sasaki move, it would not surprise me if he had the same gift.

Are there any concerns about how his game will translate from Japan to MLB?

McDaniel: Sasaki’s fastball shape and velocity regressed last season, his slider velocity also tailed off even more, he likely needs to add a fourth and maybe fifth pitch, and his execution within the strike zone could be a bit better. These are all simple enough on their own to be addressed in the first half of 2025 as long as Sasaki chooses a strong pitching development club, as I suspect he will. Some mechanical adjustments and mental cues could do a lot of the heavy lifting as these things can all be related. I would expect to see glimpses of Sasaki’s potential in 2025 while we wait until 2026 for the first dominating string of five or six starts in a row.

Olney: We really need our colleague Eduardo Perez to jump in here, because he’d be the one to tell us if Sasaki has any blatant tells such as pitch-tipping. That’s what Yamamoto experienced in his first months with the Dodgers. But Sasaki could have such excellent stuff that it doesn’t matter. His splitter seems to be so good that it won’t be hit even if the batter knows it’s coming.

Doolittle: Well, the different ball means we don’t know exactly how the measurements on his pitches will change, but that’s not a major concern. He looked great in the World Baseball Classic which offers a nice preview of that adjustment. It’s really durability. He has never thrown a lot of innings, his best pitch is a splitter and his velo was down last season. These things would be much more worrisome if he was getting a Yamamoto-like contract, but he’s not. I’ve seen his splitter carry an 80-grade and when you match that with a triple-digit fastball that moves and a track record of plus command, health is the only thing there is to worry about.

Schoenfield: The same as every starter: Health and durability. He has topped out at 20 starts and 129 innings in Japan, back in 2022. His fastball velocity was down a bit in 2024 as he missed time with a torn oblique and shoulder fatigue. He’ll also have to adjust to facing more power hitters than he faced in Japan.

Are the Dodgers the team to beat as his decision approaches?

Doolittle: They always are.

McDaniel: They are the most likely landing spot and have been seen that way for a while, but don’t underrate how little we truly know about Sasaki’s process of eliminating and ultimately choosing a club. We have some clues and potential leans, but don’t truly know very much right now.

Olney: Sure, because they seemingly land every player they want, with a bottomless pit of money. The Dodgers will be the team to beat for years on the field, and off.

Schoenfield: I’ll say no. I’m betting on Sasaki wanting to forge his own path and signing with a team that doesn’t already have Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

Which other teams do you think have the best chance of landing him?

McDaniel: The Padres, led by their ultra-aggressive GM A.J. Preller, are perceived as the second-most-likely landing spot behind the Dodgers, and San Diego clearly needs Sasaki more: He would change the outlook for the whole franchise. Beyond that, we’re mostly guessing from teams we know he has met with that seem to have a good environment for Sasaki to develop and compete in meaningful games: the Giants, Mariners, Mets, Yankees, Cubs, and Rangers seem to come up the most but I can’t even say that’s a complete list of teams getting a long look.

Doolittle: For me, the Mets stand out. Sasaki and his representation have been pretty opaque when it comes to offering glimpses of his thinking, which has led to a lot of reading between the lines. It’s such a rare thing for a player of this caliber to be able to choose any team he wants with money barely being a part of the equation. So who knows? The Mets offer a good pitching environment, a strong possibility of sustained contention and a budding pitching development program highlighted by the pitching lab they built in Port Saint Lucie. Why be another Dodger?

Olney: It’s pretty evident that Sasaki is not afraid to ignore conventional wisdom, in the same way Ohtani did when he arrived — he passed up many, many tens of millions of dollars by pushing to get to the majors now, rather than just waiting. With that in mind, I think the Padres will be the most intriguing alternative to the Dodgers, because of the weather, Darvish’s presence and the chance to play against the best, in the same division.

Schoenfield: If Sasaki is primarily concerned with his own development as a pitcher, is there a better place than Seattle? Unlike the Dodgers, the Mariners have kept their young starters healthy. They also play in a great pitcher’s park, they play on the West Coast and it’s not like Seattle doesn’t have a chance to win. But we haven’t heard much about the Mariners being in the running.

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