Roki Sasaki, the prized Japanese pitching prospect who has had scouts drooling over his potential since high school, has chosen the Los Angeles Dodgers as his major league team, he announced on Instagram on Friday.
Sasaki called this “a very difficult decision, but I will do my best to make it the right decision when I look back after my baseball career.”
The Dodgers, long viewed as the favorites for Sasaki, had recently emerged as one of three finalists for the 23-year-old right-hander, along with the Toronto Blue Jays and San Diego Padres. On Friday morning, sources said the Padres began agreeing to deals with their prospective international signees in the Dominican Republic, a clear sign throughout the industry that they were out on Sasaki. The Blue Jays thusly acquired $2 million in international bonus pool space — along with center fielder Myles Straw — from the Cleveland Guardians in hopes of enticing Sasaki.
It did not matter. A Dodgers team coming off a World Series title with a roster headlined by two of Sasaki’s most celebrated countrymen, Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, again landed one of the biggest prizes of the offseason.
In the Dodgers, Sasaki joins a team that has built a reputation as one of the best at developing talent and one that expects to field an incredibly deep rotation in 2025. Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow return from last season’s group. Ohtani, who will resume his duties as a two-way player, will be added. Blake Snell was signed to a five-year, $182 million contract in November. Clayton Kershaw is also expected to return at some point. And younger arms such as Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May and Bobby Miller remain in the organization, making it easy for the Dodgers to field a six-man rotation that would help ease Sasaki’s acclimation process.
Because he is under 25 years old and spent less than six seasons in Nippon Professional Baseball, Sasaki essentially will sign a minor league contract and follow the path of a player selected in the amateur draft — able to be optioned to the minors, scheduled to earn close to the major league minimum during his first three major league seasons and unable to become a traditional free agent until attaining six years of service time.
Teams were limited to giving him only their international bonus pool, which ranged from about $5.1 million to $7.5 million at the start of the signing period. The Dodgers were on the low end of that spectrum but acquired additional money by sending minor league outfielders Dylan Campbell and Arnaldo Lantigua to the Philadelphia Phillies and Cincinnati Reds, respectively, shortly after Sasaki announced his decision. With that, the Dodgers will pay Sasaki a $6.5 million bonus, a source said, roughly $2 million less than what the Blue Jays had prepared to offer.
The Blue Jays are all too familiar with the feeling of getting beat out on premier talent. Last offseason, they believed they were in good position to land Ohtani before he chose the Dodgers. Earlier this winter, they were also a finalist for Juan Soto before he signed the richest contract in baseball history to join the New York Mets. Corbin Burnes also seemed like a match until he took what amounted to a discount to join the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Sasaki’s departure might sting even worse for the Padres, who lost a tightly contested National League Division Series to the rival Dodgers last fall and have not made any significant moves this offseason. The Padres and their general manager, A.J. Preller, have long coveted Sasaki and were seen by many as a logical landing spot due in large part to the presence of Yu Darvish, whom Sasaki idolizes. Now the Padres, navigating tight fiscal restraints and dealing with an ownership fight, must seek creative ways to address lingering holes in their rotation and throughout their lineup.
For as legitimate a threat as the Padres were, the Dodgers were always deemed favorites. Their footprint in Japan, solidified by last winter’s additions of Ohtani and Yamamoto, is too big. Their recent success, with two World Series titles and five 100-win seasons over the past eight years, is unmatched. And, perhaps most importantly in Sasaki’s case, their track record for developing pitchers is as good as anyone’s — though they struggled mightily last year to keep a lot of those arms healthy.
The Dodgers have been scouting Sasaki since high school and reserved a lot of last year’s international signing bonus pool in anticipation of him being posted. When Major League Baseball determined Sasaki wouldn’t be eligible until the 2025 signing period, the Dodgers essentially had to reset.
They got him anyway.
Sasaki’s pitching arsenal features a mesmerizing splitter that has been lauded as one of the world’s best secondary pitches and pairs it with a fastball that reaches 100 mph, adding a slider that has also been deemed a plus pitch. In four seasons with the Chiba Lotte Marines, Sasaki posted a 2.10 ERA, a 0.89 WHIP and 505 strikeouts against 88 walks in 394⅔ innings.
In an April 10, 2022, start against the Orix Buffaloes, Sasaki pitched a perfect game while setting an NPB record with 13 consecutive strikeouts. Seven days later, he took the mound again and fired eight perfect innings before being removed from his outing. The following spring, Sasaki showcased his talents on a global stage, forming a star-studded rotation alongside Ohtani, Yu Darvish, Shota Imanaga and Yamamoto for a Japanese team that won the World Baseball Classic.
For years, major league scouts and executives descended upon Japan to catch a glimpse of Sasaki and salivated over the possibility of him someday being posted. When it finally happened in early December, upward of 20 teams made initial pitches, doing so with videos, letters and even books. Sasaki flew to the L.A. headquarters of his agency, Wasserman, later that month and conducted meetings with at least eight teams — the Dodgers, Padres, Blue Jays, New York Yankees, New York Mets, Chicago Cubs, Texas Rangers and San Francisco Giants.
Earlier this week, five of those teams were informed they were out of the running, prompting Sasaki to take follow-up meetings in Toronto, San Diego and L.A. before reaching his decision.
Sasaki needed to select his new team between this past Wednesday, the start of this year’s international signing period, and Thursday, the expiration of his posting window. His presence in the international amateur market left prospective signees of the three finalists in limbo on deals that are verbally agreed to years in advance, causing particular consternation within the Dominican Republic. The Dodgers, Padres and Blue Jays needed to not only free up their international bonus pools for the potential of landing Sasaki but entertain the possibility of trading for additional space in hopes of sweetening their offers.
Sasaki starred in Summer Koshien, a prominent Japanese high school tournament, and was taken No. 1 overall in the NPB draft in 2019. The Lotte Marines handled him carefully, restricting him to bullpen sessions and simulated games in 2020 and limiting his workload whenever possible thereafter. Sasaki’s numbers were down a bit last year, his ERA rising to 2.35. His four-seam fastball went from averaging roughly 98 mph to 96. At one point, he dealt with shoulder fatigue. There are concerns about how Sasaki will handle a major league workload, and many will acknowledge that his command needs improvement.
But few doubt his ceiling.
Within these next handful of years, several prominent evaluators believe, Sasaki could be an annual Cy Young contender.
