Roki Sasaki was expected by many to sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers. They were right.
The flame-throwing right-hander from Japan agreed to a deal with the Dodgers on Friday, according to a post on his Instagram account.
The Dodgers beat out basically all of MLB for Sasaki, who met with several teams to evaluate what they could bring to the table beyond money. The Dodgers, San Diego Padres and Toronto Blue Jays were reported to be the finalists, with the Dodgers and Padres seen as the co-favorites for most of the process.
After receiving the signing bonus, Sasaki will have the same status as any other MLB rookie once he makes his debut, going through pre-arbitration and arbitration years before he hits free agency after six years of MLB service time.
Meanwhile, Sasaki’s NPB team, the Chiba Lotte Marines, will receive a posting fee worth 20% of the signing bonus. In four seasons with the Marines, Sasaki posted a 2.02 ERA and 0.883 WHIP with 524 strikeouts in 414 2/3 innings.
Just call them the Samurai Dodgers
This deal gives the Dodgers one of the most-hyped pitching prospects in recent memory, as well as yet another Japanese star on a roster that already includes Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Ohtani, Yamamoto and Sasaki figure to form half of a six-man rotation for Los Angeles next season, further cementing the club as the national MLB team of Japan.
The trio all played together on Samurai Japan (the local nickname for the national team) in the 2023 World Baseball Classic, in which Ohtani closed out the country’s third title. Their star power on both sides of the Pacific Ocean has only increased since then.
The Dodgers were widely assumed to be Sasaki’s destination when he was first posted, and, well, there was good reason for that. They were able to offer Sasaki the chance to play for a consistent World Series contender (and recent two-time winner), one of the best pitching development programs in MLB, two teammates with whom he is very familiar, an extra day of rest between starts thanks to the six-man rotation and the ability to stay significantly visible in Japan.
Money was a much smaller part of the equation for this free agent, but the Dodgers had an advantage anyway. The rest of MLB might have some complaints about that.
Roki Sasaki lit a giant pile of money on fire by doing this
There’s really no debating it. The Dodgers just got the best deal MLB has seen since the Los Angeles Angels landed the first six years of Ohtani’s MLB career for the price of approximately $22.3 million ($20 million of which went to the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters).
It’s not a coincidence that both of those players were young Japanese stars coming stateside. In 2017, MLB instituted new Japanese posting rules that subjected players under 25 to the same international bonus pool system that is used to sign teenagers out of Latin America. Whereas Yamamoto, who was 25 when he was posted by the Orix Buffaloes last offseason, got $325 million with his 12-year contract with the Dodgers, Ohtani and Sasaki were each limited to receiving a seven-figure amount.
Why would the 23-year-old Sasaki do that rather than wait two years and land his own nine-figure deal? That will be a question worth asking him once he arrives in the U.S. The Ohtani precedent is a solid enough motivator, as that led to a happy result in the form of $700 million for the player.
The bigger question would be why the Marines posted Sasaki. It had been rumored for the past couple of years that Sasaki wanted to be posted to MLB, much to the chagrin of the Marines. The Buffaloes received more than $50 million, a franchise-changing amount of money in NPB, for Yamamoto, while the Marines will settle for a minuscule portion of that.
When they posted him, the Marines said they wished to help Sasaki achieve his dreams, but there’s no way they would have done it if they weren’t somehow compelled to. Japanese contracts are significantly different than MLB contracts, so it’s conceivable that Sasaki was able to negotiate some sort of side agreement to force his posting at some point.
The Dodgers could get a draft pick out of signing Roki Sasaki
But wait, there’s more.
Here are three things that could be true on Opening Day:
Sasaki will be on the Dodgers’ active roster
Sasaki will have his rookie eligibility intact
Sasaki will be on the Top 100 prospect lists for at least two of Baseball America, ESPN and MLB.com
If all three of those things happen, Sasaki will qualify for MLB’s Prospect Promotion Incentive. That means if Sasaki wins Rookie of the Year or places in the top three of Cy Young voting before qualifying for arbitration, the Dodgers will get a draft pick directly after the first round.
Roki Sasaki is an elite talent but not a finished product
While there’s no denying that the Dodgers received an outrageous deal, it’s also important to realize that Sasaki isn’t quite the pitcher Yamamoto was when he came to MLB.
Yamamoto was significantly more polished by the end of his NPB career, having won three straight MVPs, Eiji Sawamura Awards and pitching triple crowns. He joined the Dodgers with five usable pitches (three of them considered plus or better) and the command to make them all work.
Sasaki was certainly successful in NPB, but he succeeded with basically two pitches: a fastball that sits in the high 90s and one of the nastiest splitters in the known universe. They are two great pitches, but two-pitch pitchers rarely succeed as starters against MLB hitters. Sasaki made some progress with a slider last season, and his new coaches will almost certainly push him to continue working on it.
More concerning might be Sasaki’s usage and health. Because Japanese starters pitch once per week, Sasaki has never thrown more than 130 innings in a season. He also dealt with some arm issues last year, which would be concerning for any pitcher who throws as hard as he does. It’s not a given that Sasaki will be able to consistently deliver 160 innings in a season, much less the 200 that are expected of MLB aces.
It’s more helpful to compare Sasaki to some of the great pitching prospects of recent years. He has ace stuff like Paul Skenes and Stephen Strasburg, but both of those players developed a devastating secondary offering after getting drafted (Skenes’ “splinker” and Strasburg’s changeup). Strasburg’s persistent injury issues are also something of a cautionary tale for pitchers expecting to hit 100 throughout a start.
Again, Sasaki is preternaturally talented, but fans expecting him to dominate from Day 1 might be disappointed.
Roki Sasaki’s free agency had some collateral damage
The most unfortunate part of Sasaki going the route he did isn’t the money he cost himself. It’s the money he might have cost some other players.
Every MLB team got its international bonus pool refreshed on Jan. 15, giving them each an amount ranging from $5 million to $8 million to sign players from around the world. While it might sound like the Dodgers just used some newly available money to sign Sasaki, the reality is that money was likely earmarked for teenagers who had verbal agreements with the team.
It’s an open secret that teams make handshake deals with young players’ representatives to sign for a given amount when they turn 16 years old. Those deals are not binding, though, and if a much more attractive prospect comes around, such as Sasaki, there’s not much those players can do if the team they agreed with decides to go another direction.
Even before the Dodgers landed Sasaki, there were reports of them attempting to push back handshake deals to the 2026 cycle, with one player reportedly turning them down to join the Pittsburgh Pirates.
It’s possible the Dodgers have been planning to fit Sasaki into their 2025 international class for a while, but the reality is this pool of money is never supposed to go to more established talents like him. Both the international signing system and the Japanese posting system are heavily flawed, and those flaws worked in concert to create a situation that might cause MLB and NPB to rethink how all of this works.
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