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The story
Hanshin Tigers slugger Sato Teruaki reportedly drew intense interest from major-league scouts — from roughly 10 teams, including the Yankees, Blue Jays, and Astros — during a 3-game interleague series at Jingu Stadium. The report has split opinion on 5channel over whether he should be posted to MLB. Team/league-first voices argue “NPB shouldn’t give up its stars while the league is thriving,” while player-first voices counter that “he should be allowed to challenge MLB early, while his talent is still peaking.” The debate has spread to comparisons with Murakami Munetaka and Okamoto Kazuma, and to the impact on Hanshin’s bid for a third straight title next season.
>Scouts from 10 MLB teams eye Hanshin’s Sato Teruaki: “Overwhelming adaptability, truly elite power”
>During the 3-game series at Jingu, scouts from roughly 10 teams — including the Yankees, Blue Jays, Astros, Athletics, White Sox, Rangers, Phillies, and Tigers — were watching him closely.
The Yankees would honestly be the least jarring fit, image-wise
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
I don't want them to approve the posting.
Honestly, if he wins a title with numbers like these, they should send him off with a smile.
The golden era ends this year 🫵
Still too soon.
Let him go once he's led Hanshin to three straight titles.
Nah, probably not.
He's got to know his own arm isn't great.
If he wants to go MLB, shouldn't he just wait for free agency?
With international free agency, Hanshin gets nothing back either.
I'm a Giants fan, for the record.
I just love NPB, so I don't think posting should be approved lightly.
Sato Teru was a contested first-round pick, so you can't really put him in the same boat.
That's just normal.
Posting your star player = basically giving up on winning next year.
Posting is what cash-strapped teams do.
Never approve the posting.
Even grinding it out in Japan, it's capped at like 600 million yen (~$4M), reminder.
The "second league" (a dig at the Central League, seen as the weaker of NPB's two leagues) isn't a good reference point.
Now that you mention it, he wasn't hitting in interleague play.
Better to go while he can.
It's impossible for one guy alone anyway, so this "once he gets them three straight titles" talk makes no sense.
It means once he's contributed that much, he should be allowed to go.
Also, with Sato Teru on the roster, three in a row is easy.
That's how strong the team is.
Maybe so from the team's side, but success in Japan carries basically zero value these days.
If he's a real talent, all the more reason to go over while there's still buzz and adapt while he's young.
Guess you're looking at it from the player's side.
I love NPB, so I don't want it approved this soon.
Nice try, hater.
He was chatting with [Randy] Bass in English.
Teru's actually solid at English conversation.
If you love NPB, wouldn't posting be better since it narrows the gap between teams?
The gap between teams doesn't matter.
If a star player leaves, the excitement just drops.
By that logic, approve Sato, Saiki, and Morishita too.
Those two were on their way out, this guy's a core player…
If they win a third straight title next year by a landslide margin,
nobody but Hanshin fans will find it exciting,
Mr. Hanshin Fan.
There's nothing fun about a pennant race against teams that just got weaker.
Murakami > Sato ≥ Okamoto, right,
going by NPB stats.
Murakami >> Okamoto > Sato Teru, surely.
He's said himself he wants to go to MLB.
With Azuma ("Bean Sprout," a nod to his skinny build) gone too, DeNA probably won't be winning anything for a while.
I recall he requested it during last year's contract renewal talks.
He'll have paid the team back plenty.
The three-peat challenge is still ahead.
Hanshin has never won three straight titles, so next year matters.
Sato Teru surely knows that too.
They haven't even won back-to-back titles.
Even back-to-back only happened once, back in the pre-war split-season era.
Just winning two straight under the current full-season format would be plenty anyway.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
The posting system is a mechanism that prevents a player from moving overseas without his team’s consent, and it’s left to each team to decide when to release a core player before he earns domestic free-agent rights. In the past, SoftBank refused to approve Senga Kodai’s move for several years, while Fujinami Shintaro and Aoyagi Koyo were sent off relatively quickly — clubs’ stances have historically varied depending on how vital the player is. In the thread, a team/NPB-first view — that the league loses excitement next season if a star leaves — clashes with a player-first view that he should be allowed to challenge MLB while young and highly regarded. However, the original report only states that scouts were watching him closely; it never confirms whether Sato himself actually wants to be posted, a point readers can easily misread.
*This article was excerpted and summarized from a 5channel live-sports-chat board (なんでも実況G) thread, “[Great News] 10 MLB Teams Swarm Hanshin’s Sato Teruaki wwwwwwww.”
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