Roki Sasaki

Roki Sasaki is one of the offseason’s top stories. The Chiba Lotte Marines announced two weeks ago that they’d make the 6’2″ righty, who is widely viewed as the best pitcher in Japan, available to major league clubs via the posting system. While the Marines didn’t specify a timeline for the posting, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred confirmed this afternoon that Sasaki is not expected to sign until 2025 (link via Johnny Flores of the Athletic).

That doesn’t come as any kind of surprise. The 23-year-old Sasaki is classified as an amateur free agent — as are all players signing from a foreign league before their 25th birthday. That’s most notable because it caps Sasaki’s signing bonus to a few million dollars, a small fraction of his actual open market value. The amateur status is also relevant to the timing of his signing.

MLB permits teams to sign international amateur free agents at any point between January 15 and December 15. The vast majority of significant deals are inked on January 15. Players signing as teenagers out of Latin America usually reach verbal agreements with teams months or years in advance of the signing period. Those deals are typically finalized as soon as the period opens in mid-January.

As a result, teams have spent most or all of their bonus pools for 2024. Baseball America’s Ben Badler wrote last week that the Dodgers had the most remaining ’24 bonus space at roughly $2.5MM. By contrast, every team has between $5.1MM and $7.6MM in its pool for next year. If Sasaki were to sign before December 15, he’d be limiting himself to a small percentage on a bonus that is already capped. He’s not eligible to sign between December 15 and January 15, so he’ll wait until the opening of next year’s pool.

Of course, that presents a problem for players who have already reached verbal agreements that they expected the teams to finalize on January 15. The amateur bonus pool is hard capped. Teams can trade for bonus allotments to add a couple million dollars to their pools, but there’s a finite amount of money that MLB allows teams to spend. (Players who sign for $10K or less are exempt from the pool, but any prospect of note will sign for much more than that.)

Whichever team signs Sasaki will likely commit most or all of their pool to him. As a major league ready potential ace, he’s far more attractive to teams than even the most well-regarded teenage prospects in the class. The signing team will probably need to renege on verbal agreements with other players, who’d find themselves in flux as they look for other teams that have reached unofficial agreements with targets of their own.

If Sasaki waits into late January or February to sign, teams will need to weigh whether to finalize any commitments to other amateur players — which subtracts from the amount of money they could offer the NPB star. Badler’s piece is worth checking out in full, as he covers the trickle-down impacts that Sasaki’s free agency could have on players and trainers in Latin America. None of those are Sasaki’s concern. They’re unfortunate consequences of the system that was collectively bargained between MLB and the Players Association.

While Sasaki isn’t likely to sign before the middle of January, the posting process could begin earlier than that. A player posted by an NPB team has 45 days to sign with a major league club. The Marines could theoretically post Sasaki anytime from December 2 on to allow him to sign in the ’25 window. They’ll presumably wait at least into the middle of December so as not to force him to sign within a day or two of the opening of the signing period.

Roki Sasaki would be one of the most talented players in the upcoming free agent class if he were available. The 6’2″ right-hander has been a star in Japan for the past four seasons. He is widely regarded as one of the best, if not the best, pitchers currently in NPB. Sasaki won’t turn 23 until November and would be a top target for any number of major league clubs.

His availability is by no means guaranteed. While MLB teams have kept a close eye on Sasaki’s status for years, he doesn’t have the ability to force his way to the majors anytime soon. As with all NPB players, he’d need nine years of service time in Japan before he qualifies for international free agency.  The only way for Sasaki to make the jump to the majors earlier than that is with the cooperation of the Chiba Lotte Marines, his NPB club.

The Marines could agree to make Sasaki available to MLB teams via the posting system. The star pitcher asked them to do just that last offseason; the team declined the request, leaving Sasaki without much of a choice but to return for his fourth full season there. It seems the way that process unfolded left the pitcher displeased.

Jeff Passan of ESPN writes that Sasaki’s relationship with the Marines is damaged by the team’s denial of his posting request. According to Passan, Sasaki is likely to renew his request for the Marines to post him during the upcoming offseason. Yet it’s entirely possible — perhaps likely — that the team will decline to make him available yet again.

There isn’t much of an incentive for the Marines to let Sasaki walk this winter. Their only potential benefit would be a reputational boost of accommodating the wish of their star player to test himself against MLB hitters. The details of the posting system and MLB’s international bonus pool rules make it far more advantageous for the Marines to hold Sasaki past his 25th birthday.

International players who are under the age of 25 are considered amateurs and are subject to bonus pool restrictions. They are technically only allowed to sign minor league contracts (although an MLB team would surely select Sasaki onto the major league roster by the start of the season).

The far bigger drawback is that teams have a hard cap on spending on international amateurs. While the precise amount varies by team, Baseball America’s Ben Badler reported in April that next year’s bonus pool allotments top out at roughly $7.56MM. Teams can tack on another few million dollars via trade, but it’s a marginal difference. Even if a team maxed out its bonus pool and offered the highest amount to Sasaki (punting the chance to sign any other amateurs of significance for the year), his signing bonus would land somewhere in the $11MM range.

That’s obviously nowhere near the open market value for arguably the best pitcher in Japan. The cases of Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto are illustrative. Ohtani made the jump to MLB at age 23 and was subject to the bonus pool limitations. He signed with the Angels in 2017 for $2.3MM. Yamamoto, who waited until he was 25 to come over, signed a $325MM contract last offseason that represented the largest deal ever for a free agent pitcher. The bonus pool restrictions very likely made a difference of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Sasaki seems willing to live with those constraints to get to the majors as quickly as possible. That doesn’t mean the Marines are willing to do the same. The posting agreement between MLB and Nippon Professional Baseball ties the NPB team’s compensation to the value of the free agent contract. An MLB team signing a posted player pays a fee to the Japanese team on top of what goes to the player. The fee is a fixed amount calculated as 20% of a deal’s first $25MM, 17.5% of the next $25MM, and 15% of further spending.

Yamamoto’s $325MM deal came with a windfall for his former team, the Orix Buffaloes. The Dodgers paid the Buffaloes $50.625MM to release him from his contract. If the Marines were to let Sasaki walk this winter, they’d get a small fraction of that amount because of the bonus restrictions. A $10MM bonus for Sasaki would come with a $2MM posting fee for the Marines. That’s meager compensation for parting ways with their 23-year-old ace.

That could all point to the Marines holding Sasaki for two more years. If the team waits to make him available until the 2026-27 offseason, there’d be no limit on his signing bonus — and therefore no indirect cap on the posting fee that the team could receive. That’d presumably only further irritate Sasaki, but it doesn’t seem the pitcher has any leverage to force the team’s hand.

Ohtani making the jump to the majors in 2017-18 shows that it isn’t impossible for a top Japanese free agent to leave early in his posting window. Yet there are a few distinctions between Ohtani’s case and the situation in which Sasaki finds himself.

Jorge Castillo and Jack Harris wrote in the Los Angeles Times last winter that Ohtani had a stipulation in his contract with his NPB team, the Nippon-Ham Fighters, that allowed him to enter the posting system at any time. While Castillo and Harris wrote at the time that “Sasaki is thought to also have that clause in his deal” with the Marines, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Passan stated this morning that “Lotte controls the entire process and can keep Sasaki through the 2026 season if it so desires.” That the Marines were able to prevent Sasaki from being posted last winter — ostensibly against his wishes and in a manner that strained his relationship with the team — points to the club indeed having the final say.

The posting system was also different at the time in which Ohtani came over. While the posting fee is now strictly tied to the signing bonus amount, that was not the case in 2017. The previous posting system allowed an NPB team to name a price up to $20MM, independent of the bonus amount, which they’d require to grant the player permission to move to MLB. The Fighters established the maximum $20MM price, which the Angels happily paid to get Ohtani for a modest bonus. The Marines don’t have that option, so the Fighters collected a posting fee that is 10 times (or more) what Chiba Lotte would receive for Sasaki next winter.

That presents a significant impediment to Sasaki joining a major league team before 2027. USA Today’s Bob Nightengale wrote a couple weeks ago that some MLB executives felt the pitcher might prefer to stay in Japan for another season, though it seems the Marines are the far bigger obstacle.

Lotte does not appear to be under any contractual pressure to let him leave within the next two years. Sasaki is nowhere close to the nine-year threshold for international free agency, nor the eight-year threshold that would permit him to sign with another NPB club. The NPB Players Association has begun an effort to reduce the free agency cutoffs, but that’s an ambitious collective bargaining effort that isn’t likely to be achieved in the next few months.

Sasaki has a 2.01 earned run average in 380 2/3 career innings at Japan’s top level. This hasn’t been his best season, as he carries a personal-worst 2.45 ERA through 77 frames and missed some time with arm discomfort. He nevertheless remains an incredible talent. He has struck out nearly a third of opponents in his career and has fanned 28.7% of batters faced this season. Scouts credit him with a triple-digit fastball and a potential 70-grade (plus-plus) splitter.

He’s perhaps most famous for his stretch of dominance in April 2022, when he followed up a 19-strikeout perfect game with another eight perfect innings before finally giving up a single to start the ninth. He struck out 11 over 7 2/3 innings of four-run ball for Japan’s championship team in the 2023 World Baseball Classic.

Right-hander Roki Sasaki re-signed with the Lotte Marines of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball today on a one-year contract, per Stephen Wade of The Associated Press.

The deal puts to bed rumors that percolated earlier in the offseason that Sasaski would attempt to make the jump from NPB to MLB this winter. Such an arrangement would have been unusual for a Japanese player look to continue his career stateside. MLB posting rules stipulate that players must be at least 25 years old and have played in at least six professional seasons before they can sign with a big league club on anything other than a minor league contract.

Some players (most notably Shohei Ohtani) make the jump prior to those benchmarks, though in doing so they limit their own immediate earnings to what clubs can offer them from their international bonus pool. Said pools range from $4,144,000 to $6,366,900 for this year’s signing period, and it’s unlikely a team would be willing or able to commit their entire pool to one player. Ohtani, for example, received a bonus of just $2.3MM when he first signed on with the Angels prior to the 2018 season.

Given Sasaki’s talent, there’s little question that he would be able to command significantly more than that if he were to proceed normally through the posting system. Yoshinobu Yamamoto signed the richest free agent deal for a pitcher in MLB history earlier this winter, and it’s possible Sasaki could look to rival that sum through the posting system given his career 2.00 ERA and 34.4% strikeout rate in 46 NPB starts. Sasaski pairs a fastball that touches triple-digits with a forkball that has allowed him to dominate in the World Baseball Classic and become the youngster player in NPB history to throw a perfect game while setting an NPB record for strikeouts in a single start with 19.

Per a report from Kyodo News, Sasaki made no secret of his MLB aspirations during a recent press conference. The phenom was quoted as saying he has a desire to play in the majors “in the future,” that he has communicated that sentiment to Lotte every year, and that the club understands his goals. The report also includes comments from a Marines executive, Naoki Matsumoto. Matsumoto indicated that there was no truth to rumors of discord between Sasaki and the club regarding the right-hander’s future plans and that Sasaki’s desire to play in the majors was known to the club prior to the 2023 campaign.

Wade notes that some reports out of Japan have indicated that Sasaki has negotiated the ability to depart for the majors ahead of the typical posting timeline, perhaps even as soon as next offseason. With that being said, however, neither Sasaki nor the Marines have given a hint as to a timeline for the righty’s jump to the big leagues. When asked about a timeline for his move stateside at the aforementioned presser, Sasaki demurred in favor of focusing on the coming 2024 campaign. Whether that move ultimately comes next offseason or sometime in the future, Sasaki has flashed the potential to be a game-changing arm for any club and would instantly become one of the most attractive free agents in the class he joins.