The Padres have a HUGE Opportunity...

The Padres have another huge opportunity as this player is available and would fit nicely onto the Padres. Who is he? How good is he? Should we sign him? Let's talk about it. Hi, welcome back to another episode of Padres Digest with your host, Andrew. Today, my dog wants to go for a walk and I'm busy. I am so sorry, Papa. Let me make my video first. Okay, sorry i just wanted to share with you the glory of my dogs anyways uh today we're talking more NPB Japanese players because it is the season camera can you stay still please thank you uh so expect a lot of these well not a lot of these but we have a few more players to talk about so expect that but before we get too deep into the video please subscribe as always follow us on X Instagram Facebook Padres Digest uh sorry my camera's all messed up now uh but yeah let's just jump right into it who is this man is he good should we sell the farm for him i don't know that's not really a true statement but you know what i mean you know what i mean i hope shoki oda shoki yeah shoki oda skips NPB to pursue MLB career as you sometimes do but Rintaro Sasaki you probably don't know who that is and that's okay that's not important but he opened the floodgates now shoki oda who shaki shoki whatever shoki oda who set a summer Koshien fastball velocity record and starred at the U18 world cup qualifier so under 18 is set to come to the states to uh i hope i'm saying his name right if not please yell at me but this guy's good right i want to eventually become the best pitcher in the world he said and you know what i would love for that too especially if it was on the Padres uh so who he is right he is an 18 year old pitcher from Yokohama High School he is six foot one top speed 157 kilometers per hour let me convert that the real quick, okay, in mph that is 97.5 so we'll say 98 miles per hour, so very good, and helped win the 2025 Spring Koshin which is like the big tournament for high schoolers, uh, if we like high school football here like in Texas, uh, high school baseball is like that equivalent in Japan, Koshin is like the big big big tournament national wide tournament so his three paths, right? He can sign with an MLB team as an international free agent he can play college baseball at a U.S. college and he could still be picked in the October 22nd NPB draft which is the Japanese league, so Shoki Oda post a Koshin and U18 numbers, aka he is very good, right so he made, uh, his, he made new history as he threw a 97 mile per hour pitch the fastest one in Koshin tournament history, and yes he is 18 years old and just out of high school throwing 97 miles per hour, yes you saw that right, so he threw a complete game shutout in the Koshin quarterfinals against, uh, Hanamaki Higashi again so sorry, 123 innings pitched or 123 pitches in nine innings which is crazy to me to think about a high school player doing that, but 18 whiffs, three walks which is livable 10 strikeouts and seven hits 94 through 96 on the fastball and he touched 97 multiple times so he is very, very, very good right, his arsenal, he has a fastball like we said pretty fast, splitter around 89 to 90 miles per hour at its best and he also has a slider a curve a change and a cutter, so a very good pitch mix I'm not going to say like Yu Darvish because Yu Darvish throws like 20 pitches, I swear to God but something similar, I'm sure a lot of players like to use Yu Darvish as their role model I would say and stuff like this because he's a national hero obviously right but he has had some shaky starts the semi-finals he had four runs allowed on and one home run he threw 123 pitches the day before the U18 versus Chinese Taipei six innings pitched three hits one run seven strikeouts five walks so not horrible but not great and then Japan did win that game though two to one and Francis Romero named him the tournament's top prospect which is good that's what you want to see right so who is interested in a player like this well to be honest a lot of people Dodgers and Yankees have been confirmed linked to Shohei Ota but the Padres aren't going to let him go to them without a fight right he actually watched a postseason game in San Diego to get a feel for the atmosphere which is exactly where you'd want to go to feel the atmosphere you want to go to LA where it's 100 degrees and their fans don't even show up anymore because they're so used to winning uh we're actually loyal here unlike those Dodger fans uh there we go regarded as the front runners to sign the 18 year olds the Dodgers and the Yankees but you know they're always the front runners right but but but don't count us out right i don't want to say this is Roki Sasaki 2.0 uh it might be a little bit right but i i also don't think it's a done deal that he is going to go to the Dodgers and or the Yankees right but they're always the ones who are going to make the biggest offers to the biggest players right the yankees are said to have offered a 500 million yen uh offer uh let me translate that translate that let me convert that to dollars so that would be 3 million 164 987 we'll say just above three three million dollars so again obviously a lot of money right no one's saying it's not a lot of money but that all depends on something we'll talk about in a sec but basically it's a international pool now again we'll talk about in a sec but those are numbers that aren't the same for everybody and have a limit so it's not like when the dodgers can sign whoever they want whatever they want and their deep pockets there are a limit to the pool right so not everyone has the same pool amount so again teams linked they had dodgers and yankees uh cubs are also involved 20 plus teams are basically watching him right so while those are the ones that are reported everybody's basically watching him everybody everybody everybody so don't count us out but also don't make it a foregone conclusion that he is coming here right the padre side though april they scouted japan's u18 camp uh early october it was like i said we watched the postseason game no padre's offer has been reported which isn't like crazy right uh so some similar story brian balser i hope i said a name right but he's also a Japanese American prospect and he signed for 10,000 in 2023 and he's now our number six prospect and he looks very good right so it would kind of be the similar vein to someone like him not exact but a similar vein correct so Padres of course will face hard cap in the Shoki Oda chase so they'll have a if it loads there we go they'll likely to sign when the new international free agent period opens up on January 15th so a while from now right but what decides Oda's price the NPB draft Oda is still eligible to be picked by them right and then you got the CBA which expires which is gonna throw a whole wrench into everything and the international signing period where Oda is expected to sign per Bleacher Nation uh so i might be wrong on this but i'm pretty sure i'm right if he does get drafted to an NPB team i am pretty sure that means that a team will then have to pay that team in order to bring him to the U.S. that or he can just straight up reject the NPB and go to the U.S. let me double check that real quick okay i was wrong or kind of right whatever but he can uh say no to the NPB draft and then come over here so i was a little bit wrong but what's i don't i whatever i'm never wrong let's just put it that way so how do the international pool bonus pools work right so in 2026 the international pool was 5.94 million Dodgers had more at 6.68 and 5.44 and pools are a hard cap right but you can't get 60 percent more via trade uh for example we saved i think a million when we traded Ron Maranacio to the Pirates so we were able to get more money from the Pirates thanks to Ron Maranacio and we'll obviously very much use that money because Preller loves the international free agent uh market right but the NPB draft wrinkle teams can still draft Oda Ohtani was drafted in 2012 despite his MLB plans uh Soft Bank drafted Suzuki last year and could not sign with him uh and cannot sign him and then Soft Bank's GM would not rule out drafting Oda so again he can still get drafted and he can still play with the NPB but it seems like he wants to come over here which i mean i get right i feel like japanese baseball has i don't feel like it has completely taken off recently and now there's a lot of really good players coming out of Japan that would dominate here in the league and we've already started seeing it i mean Yamamoto obviously uh Ohtani Say is Suzuki um and more not thinking of currently but japanese baseball is about to take over MLB and honestly i'm not mad at that because the talent there is insane and i would much prefer it if they were on the Padres uh Yuki Matsui he's a good player uh but no japanese player has ever gone directly to the majors and achieved great success so we've had players who have skipped again Roki Sasaki but he hasn't been great most of the players have come from the NPB or other leagues mostly NPB and then come here again Ohtani Ichiro uh Yuki Matsui so it's obviously still a risk right uh and he has been reported to be uh he's chosen an even more thorny path than Roki Sasaki again not an important name for you right now but just know that his path is definitely not a for sure kind of thing right it'll be rocky but if this is what he wants and we already signed another japanese player basically who has less experience than Oda because at least he has played regular baseball you know what i mean instead of a semi-hard ball uh but both players i think are good right the one we just signed if you haven't watched that video yet do it uh is a little bit more of a risk but i also think this player Oda is a risk but i think he is more aligned to succeed if he were to sign with the Padres right so i want you guys to let me know how you feel should the Padres spend big on Oda obviously spend big as in use up the pool uh or no spread the money sign other players you let me know what you think do you want him do you not let me know but yeah thank you guys so much for watching please subscribe as always follow us on X Instagram Facebook Padres Digest thank you to our channel members join our membership for awesome bonus features have a fantastic wonderful rest of your day goodbye bye and bye