Tigers reported to be interested with air quotes in the Freep headline in Japanese starter Roki Sasaki. Independent of baseball reasons, It would be good for the city to have a good, followable Japanese player on the roster since the city is digging its way out of 57-80 years of bad PR internationally. That is no reason to spend unwisely or to disrupt their lineup. But, they have some of the infrastructure in place (Kenta Maeda's interpreter) to support another Japanese ballplayer on the roster and in the clubhouse.
While overseas in S.Korea during the Hideo Nomo-on-the-Tigers era, i noted that Japanese TV broadcasts would cover his games. This preceded the proliferation of satellite channels we have today but still.
Basically...bring better attention to Detroit internationally via having an up and coming player. We can all agree that is basically a good thing.