I wasn’t in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ meeting with stud Japanese pitcher Roki Sasaki, but let me take a guess as to how it went:
“Hi Roki, we’re the Dodgers. Over the 10 years from 2014 through '23, we won an average of 99.5 games a season, nine division titles, three pennants and a World Series. Our owner said he considered that to be a failure, so he signed the most talented player in the history of the sport—Shohei Ohtani, your friend and idol—and we immediately won the World Series again last year. We have most of the best players in baseball and we’re willing to spend money to get the rest of them. You can spend your whole career pitching in a six-man rotation to preserve your arm, and we’ll almost certainly find a small mechanical or mental change that unlocks an entirely new level of dominance. The weather is great here, the flight home is a breeze and we sell Hi-Chew at the Dodger Stadium concession stands. Any questions?”
