Juan Soto, Corbin Burnes and Alex Bregman are the biggest names of the MLB offseason, but perhaps the most interesting is Roki Sasaki, the 23-year-old Japanese flamethrower who might or might not become available to teams stateside this winter.
For years, the Chiba Lotte Marines star has loomed as the next great import from Nippon Professional Baseball, following in the footsteps of Shohei Ohtani, Yu Darvish, Masahiro Tanaka and Ichiro Suzuki. The date of his arrival, however, is unknown.
Why? Let’s get into that.
Who is Roki Sasaki?
Sasaki is perhaps the most exciting pitching prospect to ever come out of Japan. A native of Rikuzentakata in the Iwate prefecture, he was on MLB teams’ radars when he was in high school before he opted to declare for the NPB draft, in which the Marines won his draft rights in 2019.
Sasaki has since dominated the league, posting a career 2.02 ERA with 524 strikeouts in 414 2/3 innings across four seasons. He doesn’t have the greatest numbers ever by an NPB pitcher (that title probably belongs to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, now of the Los Angeles Dodgers), but Sasaki might be even more intriguing because of an arsenal that Japanese hitters are surely sick of facing.
When did people start learning about Sasaki?
Sasaki was great for a while in Japan, but he started drawing international eyeballs in April 2022, when he threw a 19-strikeout perfect game. It’s not hyperbole to call it the most impressive pitching performance ever.
Sasaki followed that by throwing eight perfect innings and 14 strikeouts in his next start before he was taken out due to workload concerns. That’s when a lot of MLB fans started trying to figure out when he could move stateside.
More attention came during the 2023 World Baseball Classic, in which Sasaki was a member of Team Japan’s vaunted pitching staff that led the country to victory. Sasaki started the semifinal game against Mexico, giving up five hits and three runs and recording three strikeouts against a lineup of mostly MLB hitters.
What can we expect from Sasaki in MLB?
Sasaki is an exciting prospect, but he’s not a perfect prospect.
We can compare Sasaki and Yamamoto. While Sasaki has a bigger frame than Yamamoto, can throw harder than Yamamoto and has a splitter that outshines Yamamoto’s, Yamamoto came over as the more complete pitcher, thanks to his command and more well-rounded arsenal. Sasaki might have the highest ceiling of any pitching prospect, but he still needs to show that he can put it all together against MLB’s hitters.
Odds are he will, but he might need a year or two in MLB before he really dominates. Any MLB team would gladly give him that runway, but at the same time, it might be best for him to stay in Japan a bit longer.
More concerning were Sasaki’s velocity dip and injury issues this year, as he saw his fastball lose a tick and missed a few starts due to arm discomfort. These are significant red flags, considering that starting pitchers who throw 100 rarely make it more than a few years in MLB before needing major surgery.
What kind of stuff are we talking about?
Let’s start by noting that Sasaki has tied Ohtani as the hardest-throwing pitcher in the history of Japan, with his fastest pitch coming in at 102.5 mph. Sasaki showed up to the WBC and threw 26 of 29 pitches faster than 100 mph. No starting pitcher in MLB throws that hard that consistently.
We can easily grade that fastball an 80 on the 20-80 scouting scale. The other 80 in Sasaki’s arsenal would be his splitter, which is usually his strikeout pitch and might be the best pitch of its type in the world.
After that, well, Sasaki has found most of his success as a two-pitch pitcher. That’s hard to do as a starter, but he has repeatedly overwhelmed hitters with his fastball-splitter duo. That said, he worked on his slider this season with encouraging results, and any MLB team is going to want him to continue that process.
So he’s going to get a huge amount of money?
Nope, a few million dollars at most. Think “26th overall pick of the 2024 MLB Draft” money.
Wait, what?
The key thing with Sasaki is that he is 23 years old. When Yamamoto came to MLB and got $325 million from the Dodgers, he was 25. Those two years are very important.
Because Sasaki is younger than 25, he is bound by the same international free agent rules that govern the young players in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and everywhere else that isn’t the U.S. If a team wants to sign him, they must do so using money out of their international bonus pools, which topped out at a little more than $7 million for the more favored teams this season.
After signing, Sasaki’s path will be basically the same as that of any other prospect. He could go to the minors (but almost certainly won’t), and his team will have six years of control, with arbitration coming after three years. If Sasaki comes to MLB this offseason, he will be eligible for free agency after 2030, his age-28 season.
Why would he do that?
That is the $300 million question.
Sasaki would be potentially forgoing hundreds of millions of dollars by coming to the U.S. now versus two years from now. The Marines would make tens of millions of dollars from his posting in two years, compared to a pittance if he comes over now.
The reason for Sasaki to come over now is that Ohtani was in the same position before the 2018 season, and then he earned $700 million. Perhaps Sasaki thinks he can build his baseball career better if he’s facing the best hitters in the world as soon as possible.
Do we know if Sasaki’s getting posted?
We do not, for all of the above reasons.
It has seemed pretty clear that the Marines don’t want to post him yet, and you’d think that would be the end of it, but NPB contracts are not like MLB contracts. Much is done in secret and on a year-by-year basis, with the possibility of Sasaki having a clause in his contract that could force his posting.
We probably won’t know for sure what’s next for Sasaki until he signs his next contract with the Marines or gets posted.
What happens if he gets posted?
If Sasaki is officially posted, that triggers a 45-day window in which he can negotiate with every MLB club, from the Dodgers to the White Sox. If he signs with a team, that’s it.
If he doesn’t, he goes back to the Marines and can’t be posted until next offseason.
How would teams woo Roki Sasaki?
We went through this with Ohtani, in what was basically the baseball version of “The Bachelor.” All the teams signaled their interest, he gave out a rose to seven finalists, and then he ended up picking the Los Angeles Angels, for some reason.
That’s what would happen with Sasaki. Rather than a bidding war, teams would pitch him on what they could do for him from a comfort and performance standpoint. Track record, facilities, personnel and personal comfort would become huge parts of an equation typically dominated by money.
Who are the favorites for Roki Sasaki?
It’s probably the team that just won the World Series, with two of Sasaki’s Samurai Japan teammates playing central roles, after making the playoffs every year for more than a decade, with the largest following in Japan, in the city with the largest Japanese population in the continental United States.
We are talking, of course, about the L.A. Dodgers.
So the Dodgers want to remake the Samurai Japan rotation?
The Dodgers have been whispered about as the favorites for Sasaki if he comes over for a while now, and winning a ring with Ohtani and Yamamoto, who are under contract for the next nine years, definitely didn’t hurt their chances.
Also, the Dodgers, a very smart team, have been acting like they’ve known Sasaki is coming over all year by preserving $2.5 million in international bonus money, the most remaining of any MLB team. You don’t do that unless you think you have a real chance, though that advantage would go away if Sasaki’s posting goes beyond Jan. 15, when the international bonus pools are reset.
It sounds outrageous — the current biggest “haves” in baseball landing the player for whom money theoretically shouldn’t be a factor. Imagine a rotation of Ohtani, Yamamoto, Sasaki, Tyler Glasnow and Clayton Kershaw. Heck, sign Max Fried, whom the Dodgers are also reportedly in on, and make it a six-man rotation.
The Dodgers are basically already the team of Japan by virtue of Ohtani’s unfathomable popularity there, but adding Sasaki would make them appointment viewing for the country three times per rotation turn. It’s a nightmare scenario for any person invested in the Dodgers not reaching dynastic territory.
Which teams could challenge the Dodgers?
That would be up to Sasaki.
The San Diego Padres are intriguing, as they are also good and employ another Japanese great in Darvish, who is responsible for a photo showing Sasaki outfitted in Padres gear during a ping-pong night with the boys. You would imagine that every other contender is also interested, including the New York Yankees, San Francisco Giants and New York Mets, so it largely comes down to what Sasaki is looking for.
The Dodgers are probably the favorites, but this is not at a point where you clearly take them over the field. For all we know, Sasaki doesn’t want to spend the first six years of his MLB career in Ohtani’s and Yamamoto’s shadows.
Can we wrap this up?
Sure. Sasaki is a generationally flame-throwing pitcher who would probably get somewhere around $300 million if he were an MLB free agent right now. Instead, if he is posted by his NPB team, he would be the biggest bargain in baseball: six years of a potential ace for fifth-starter money.
We don’t know when he’s coming over and if it’ll be this winter, but it immediately becomes one of the biggest stories of the offseason when he does. And the Dodgers will probably be there, whether it’s 2024 or 2026.
