00:00okamoto a four-year 60 million dollar contract okamoto puts pen to paper for with the toronto
00:06blue jays these are two guys that have clearly won over their fan base within the first 24 hours
00:13of the ink being dry tetsuya imai goes to a houston texans game before he even puts pen to
00:19paper with the astros and then okamoto is going down a slide on a video the blue jays post and
00:24you know they both have uh in english rallying cry for the fan base ready to go at their signing
00:31event uh okamoto seems to be a really fun addition to the toronto blue jays and we get into who the
00:37player is with our momentarily but i want to start with your thoughts on this peter this guy
00:42is clearly he was clearly a sought after bat on the free agent market and there were teams that
00:50popped up the pittsburgh pirates seem to be rumored to be interested in kizuma okamoto there were plenty
00:56of other teams but it's toronto that's the one that gets it done why do you feel like toronto was the
01:01one to put their hat in the ring and come out victorious i think what toronto has done this
01:06offseason is operated in a market where a lot of teams are hesitant and they see this offseason
01:15as their lane in order to build a team that could not only make the world series once but be a
01:22perennial world series contender and you know you already have the moves with dylan cease and tyler
01:30rogers and cody pons and now you add okamoto to the fold now for four years and 60 million dollars
01:39you're hoping that he could be a middle of the order maybe five six hitter in the lineup is back
01:45giving you consistent um production we're dealing with uh what's going on here no we're good we're
01:52good we're fine dealing with um you want a guy in the middle of the lineup who can hit you 20 home
01:59runs and hit between 270 to 280 and not strike out a lot and he fits right into what the blue jays want
02:06to do their contact driven identity right what made the blue jays so good obviously they hit
02:11they could hit for power but with two strikes the ability to take a walk the ability to fight with
02:18two strikes and not strike out that's what they're getting with this guy when you compare him to moon
02:23and takumura kami which is a big bet on his ability to hit for power and even arm came on and said that
02:29there's the potential that it's a 20 hit tool and an 80 power tool where with okamoto we're likely
02:36looking at 50s and 55s across the board and that fits right into exactly what toronto wants to do
02:43and when you look at his projections on fangraphs the bullish projection has him at a 115 wrc plus which
02:52means projecting him to be about 15 above league average but it's the home runs that jumped out to me
02:59jack we've seen him hit 30 plus home runs in the mpb a bunch of times but normally when you come over
03:06that power doesn't necessarily translate like we might think 27 home runs from the bat x which has
03:13won numerous awards for accuracy so when i looked at a potential comp for him i actually looked at ian
03:19hap's season last year where it's about a 250 average it's a pretty high obp decently high slogan in
03:28the 4 30 range with 23 home runs now i don't think he's gonna walk at a 13 rate like ian hap but i
03:35don't even think he's gonna play defense at the level that ian hap will but i think that's the type
03:40of bat they just brought in
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