Roki Sasaki, coveted Japanese ace, will be made available to MLB teams: Will Dodgers strike again?

Roki Sasaki, a premier pitcher in Japan and the No. 3 ranked player in The Athletic’s top 40 MLB free agent big board, is on the precipice of making his long-anticipated jump to Major League Baseball.

The Chiba Lotte Marines, Sasaki’s club in Nippon Professional Baseball, announced early Saturday morning that they will post the 23-year-old right-hander, thus making him available to MLB teams in what is expected to be a wide-open sweepstakes for his services.

Because of his age, Sasaki will be considered an international amateur in MLB’s system, meaning that he would make the minimum salary and his bonus will be capped. Every MLB team is assigned a dollar amount to spend on international amateurs and cannot exceed it, although they can trade for some additional space. Teams on the low end are allotted $5.1 million for 2025 and $7.6 million on the high end. Therefore, both Sasaki’s salary and the 20 percent fee that will be paid to the Lotte Marines will be relatively small figures.

It’s a situation similar to the one faced by Shohei Ohtani when he arrived in the U.S., which runs in stark contrast to last winter’s top prize out of the Japanese market, Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

“He’s not the finished product that Yamamoto is,” one club official recently told The Athletic’s Will Sammon and Patrick Mooney. “But there’s not many people in the world who are more talented.”

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Sasaki was coveted since his days in high school, and few pitchers from Japan will arrive in the U.S. with as much hype. His fastball was clocked in the triple digits. In a recent analysis, The Athletic’s Eno Sarris noted that even with a slight step back in velocity and results for last season, Sasaki still showed signs of translating his success stateside. Only Juan Soto and Corbin Burnes rank ahead of Sasaki on The Athletic’s free-agent rankings.

“If he was someone in the amateur draft, he’d easily be a top-five draft pick,” one high-ranking executive in the sport said. “Probably better.”

It’s unclear which international class Sasaki will be a part of. MLB’s 2024 international signing period runs until Dec. 15, and the 2025 period begins Jan. 15. Clubs are committed to players in both classes already, but Sasaki is a special talent that teams have been preparing to court.

It’s unclear exactly when that process will be underway, but once Sasaki is posted, he has 45 days to sign. He is expected to join an MLB team for 2025. The news went out at 1 a.m. on the East Coast of the U.S., which was 3 p.m. in Chiba.

While Sasaki’s arrival in MLB this offseason was long speculated, it also seemed possible it might wait a couple of years. Had Chiba Lotte delayed until 2026, when Sasaki was 25, both he and the club could have made considerably more money. Sasaki then would be considered a “foreign professional” in the eyes of MLB’s collective bargaining agreement, and he would not be subject to the international bonus pool. That’s the classification Yamamoto fell under last offseason when he signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers for $325 million.

The Dodgers, home to Shohei Ohtani in addition to Yamamoto, have been often linked to Sasaki. The New York Mets and Chicago Cubs have followed him closely as well, among others. Meanwhile, the Yankees and Padres have scouted the Pacific Rim extensively and have been aggressive in that market.

NPB players have to play for nine years in the league to become an international free agent and freely sign with an MLB team, without being posted for bidding. Because that wait time is so long, the best Japanese players typically arrive in the U.S. via the bidding system.

Sasaki pitched for Japan in the 2023 World Baseball Classic and drew attention for hitting triple digits with his fastball. He throws a slider and splitter as well. His durability is likely his largest question mark.

(Photo: Sam Navarro / USA Today)