Baseball: Hawks win negotiation rights to Stanford's Sasaki

The SoftBank Hawks won the negotiation rights to highly touted Japanese slugger Rintaro Sasaki of Stanford University as their first pick during the Nippon Professional Baseball draft on Thursday.The Pacific League pennant winner Hawks won a two-way lottery with the DeNA BayStars for the 20-year-old first baseman, who enrolled at Stanford last year after skipping NPB's draft in the fall of 2023.Sasaki, who ended his first season at Stanford in May batting .269 with seven home runs and 41 RBIs over 52 games, will be eligible for the Major League Baseball draft next July."I respect whichever …READ FULL ARTICLE