Tokyo – Andrew Friedman remembers his talent, the crowd, and perhaps more than anything else, his hat.
In February 2023, the Dodgers president of baseball operations, led by the most anticipated world baseball classics to date, accompanied team scouts and executives to take a look at the country’s Japan Samurai national team in person.
For years, the Dodgers have been scouting the improved talents coming out of the country.
He sat at Hyuga Sun Marine Stadium in Miyazaki and observed that it was nothing more than a bullpen and batting practice, but Friedman was hit on the scene.
On the field he saw the pitchers take the mound in a group of four, each pumping a seemingly fastball, making the eye-opening breaking pitch surprisingly consistent and simple.
In the stands, Friedman was attacked by a crowd of about 20,000 people swarming up training, giving him a clear reminder of “how passion they are about baseball.”
He made another observation as Friedman scanned his seat. Many fans wore MLB Club hats.
“You can see Padre hats, Yankees hats, Red Sox hats, Cubs hats, Rangers hats, and Dodgers hats,” he recalled the spring. “And it made me think about incredible potential opportunities.”
What if Friedman and fellow executives think the Dodgers can push the market with Japan’s top talent? What if they created Japan’s most popular MLB team?
The Dodgers were already thinking about how to approach Shohei Ohtani’s upcoming free agency. They had been scouting Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Saga Roki for a long time, so they were prepared to pursue each pitcher once the MLB team was posted to sign.
Now they had a vision of what Friedman called a “dream scenario.”
Sign all three. And in the process, they effectively “paint Japan blue.”
Fans will stop photos at the entrance plaza at Tokyo Dome when they arrive to see the Dodgers do well on Friday.
(Robert Gautier/Los Angeles Times)
“It was something we thought we had imagined and dreamed of,” said Gallen Kerr, the vice president of the Dodgers player representative and a central figure in their international scouting.
Two years later, these grand plans came to life. Otani, Yamamoto, and Sasaki are Dodgers. They added the latter after helping the previous pair win last year’s World Series. And once, Japanese fanbase focused on their interest in the Dodgers, who arrived in Tokyo as if they were home teams for the season-opening series with the Chicago Cubs last week.
“In 2022, finding Dodger hats wasn’t that easy, but because they were out of stock in volume,” Friedman said.
But last year he said: “They weren’t in stock that much – because they kept selling out.”
Long before the Dodgers got Otani or other current stars, they began to gain popularity in Japanese baseball culture.
It began in 1995 when Dimoo Nomo became the first Japanese star to permanently move to major league baseball. That career began with controversy, with pitchers having to exploit the loopholes in their contract with the Japanese team to sign with the Dodgers. But it opened the door for others to follow in his footsteps. And more players, especially pitchers such as Kurodajima, Kenta Maeda and Yu Darvish, have built their homes in the Chavez Valley.
“This particular organization has a historic and inherent attraction to Asia,” Kerr said, also noting the Dodgers’ connection in Korea with pitcher Jang Ho Park and Hinjin Ryu. “I think a lot of us were very much in trying to revitalize it. The excitement of that brand, the Dodgers.”
So over the past few years, teams have begun to devote more and more resources to scouting on the Pacific edge. And by that point, Yamamoto (the most valuable player in Japan’s Japanese professional baseball league three times) and Sasaki (the longtime scouting beloved who pitched 100 mph from high school) had already emerged as the top targets of the two.
“For us,” Friedman said, “A big win would have been to get two.”
However, in pursuit of Japanese blue painting, they embraced the hope of landing all three.
Like most Japanese players, scouting Yamamoto and Sasaki was a nuanced process. MLB officials were unable to directly access either of them as they were still signed with Japanese clubs. So, when Dodgers officials such as Kerr, John Deebel, scouting director for the Asia-Pacific region, have estimated that Kerr has gone to Japan about 20 times in the last two years, when other officials in the international reconnaissance department set out to see them.
One: Collect information both with the eyes (by watching games, practices, team workouts) and ears (by collecting more personal nuggets from sources connected to the player or team).
“It’s very similar to what we’ve experienced here (we have prospects from the national draft),” Kerr pointed out.
2: Simply be seen and exist, “Let me know you’re trying.”
“It just happens to be that when you go over there it stands out,” Kerr said. “These players, of course, don’t have access to us, and there’s a good reason. They’re on someone else’s team. But as someone who travels from America when you’re watching the stadium, it usually gets some attention in the media over there.”
“It’s a little embarrassing,” Kerr added with a laugh. “Even when I’m there, there are all these pictures. But you know it’s giving some sort of impression.”
The electronic sign spans almost all urban blocks and features an advertisement featuring Shoe Hei Daitsuki near Tokyo Dome. This is a sign that Otani and the Dodgers have become Japan’s de facto home team.
(Robert Gautier/Los Angeles Times)
As the final offseason approached, and the Dodgers began making free-agent pitches for Otani, Yamamoto and Sasaki (some of the sports around the sport might be posted to MLB after the 2023 season), there was still one dynamic that they couldn’t be sure of.
There was an industry belief that Japan’s star preferred not to play for the same MLB team. And while the Dodgers had doubts about the theory, for Friedman, it didn’t match the friendship he witnessed from Japan’s victorious 2023 WBC team, they were wary of the unknown deep inside the debate with Ohno and Yamamoto.
“After going through the process with Yoshinobu and the hei and the shoes, ask, “How comfortable is it to play with other people?” The answer was positive,” recalls Friedman. “But we still didn’t know what that meant.”
After Otani signed an unprecedented $700 million contract in December 2023, he immediately worked on recruiting Yamamoto. And when these efforts led to another record-breaking $325 million contract, the Dodgers gave Yamamoto the biggest contract in MLB history for pitchers other than Otani – the Dodgers changed their sights towards Sasaki the following offseason.
Their dream of drawing the blue of Japan was realised.
He has been the agent of many Japanese players in recent years, and has also represented Darvish, Kodai Senga, Suzuki Sato and Yamamoto.
But even Joel Wolfe, executive vice president and managing executive of baseball at Wasserman Media Group, couldn’t help but notice Japan’s situation after Ohtani and Yamamoto joined the Dodgers.
He said all the games were broadcast live on television in the morning. For example, the 7pm start in Los Angeles will take place at 11am in Japan and rerun in the evening. Almost every Japanese stadium has a pop-up shop selling gear for three teams: the home team, the road team and the Dodgers.
Wolf made an overwhelming observation this offseason when he said, “The Dodgers have the advantages of home field in Japan.”
“They’re everywhere,” he said. “All players and fans watch the Dodgers every day, so thanks to Otani and Yamamoto, that’s always in their hearts.”
And when it comes to Wolf’s latest star Japanese client, Sasaki, it appears that it’s been applied again.
Dodgers teammates Yotani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto celebrate their World Series victory at Yankee Stadium in October last year.
(Robert Gautier/Los Angeles Times)
The Dodgers were considered a front runner throughout his free agency. And while the other two finalists, the San Diego Padres and the Toronto Blue Jays, made a slow push, his decision to sign in to Los Angeles almost surprised anyone in the industry.
“I got Shohei and Yoshinobu,” Carr said.
The Dodgers cite other reasons for their ability to land Sasaki. He made his MLB debut in Tokyo on Wednesday, following Yamamoto as the team’s second starter in the season-opening series with the Chicago Cubs.
Friedman pointed to the club’s “unpredicting nothing” spirit of recruiting pitch. Styles built in the past often fail to bid such players, including Otani, who first came from Japan in 2017.
Meanwhile, the club pointed out many years of scouting information gathered in Sasaki. This proved important when the pitcher presented an “homework assignment” to the team of interest and asked for an idea about how to reverse the dip at the speed of the fastball that tormented him last year.
“There’s a lot of value in being able to source that information and be able to look back at two years ago when he got faster,” Kerr said. “There were people who did that. You can’t ask anyone.”
Still, when asked how the Dodgers’ popularity in Japan changed last year this week, after Ratani and Yamamoto signed in LA, Sasaki pointed out how often he saw them on television and how much attention he got into his run to the World Series.
“It made them even more present,” he said in Japanese.
The Dodgers’ hope is that the same dynamics apply to the wave of future prospects coming from Japan. This, along with Ohatani, Yamamoto and Sasaki, serves as the ancestors of the potential golden generation of Japanese baseball, in terms of team evaluators.
“When we ask about the next five years in Japan, we can name at least three really interesting names that we’ll be looking to move forward and look at,” Kerr said.
“In our ideal world, kids grow up in Japan, watch Dodger games, see being fans of the team. And when they make the decision to decide, it gives us some advantage in the process.”
Time shows exactly how influential the Dodgers’ popularity surge is. As Wolfe stated, “Every player is an individual and sees the world through his lens and his background and cultivation.”
“Yoshinobu and Loki,” he added. “We chose the Dodgers for very different reasons,” he added.
Still, at the beginning of this week’s trip to Tokyo, the team saw signs of popularity one after another, including yet another acquired training at Tokyo Dome on Friday.
Just like Friedman’s trip to watch Team Japan two years ago, Dodgers practice attracted thousands of fans (10,507 to be precise, a capacity ticket allocation that sold out in an hour). They cheered on batting practice, base running drills and outfield catch sessions.
However, this time there was no question as to which team would be best represented. As far as we could see, there were only Dodgers stolen goods and blue waves.
“The Dodgers have a lot of representatives,” said manager Dave Roberts. “I think our mission has been achieved and portrayed the country of Japan.”
