Roki Sasaki’s official arrival into the free agent market will likely take place during baseball’s Winter Meetings, as ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports that the star right-hander is expected to be posted by the Chiba Lotte Marines on Tuesday. Once posted, Major League teams have 45 days to negotiate with Sasaki, and he’ll return to the Marines for the 2025 Nippon Professional Baseball season if no deal is reached.
It is seen as a virtual lock that Sasaki will be coming to MLB, given how the 23-year-old is so eager to pitch in the big leagues that he is leaving a fortune on the table by coming to North America so early in his career. Since Sasaki is an international free agent who is less than 25 years old, he can only be signed using funds from a team’s international bonus pool.
The timing of the posting is noteworthy, as Sasaki’s 45-day negotiating window will stretch beyond January 15 and the opening of the 2025 international signing period. Since the 2024 period ends on December 15 and teams have already basically spent everything in their budgets, it was widely expected that Sasaki will wait until after January 15 to sign so he could land at least a little more money. Unofficially, teams have had deals in place with international prospects for years in advance of the 2025 int’l window, yet if necessary, it is expected that some teams will walk away from these under-the-table deals if it means giving their entire 2025 bonus pool over to Sasaki.
However, as Sasaki’s early foray to the big leagues indicates, money is far from his chief motivator. Pitching in Major League Baseball will help Sasaki on the endorsement front, of course, but the circumstances of his arrival creates one of the more interesting free agent cases in recent years — arguably the most interesting since Shohei Ohtani’s arrival in the 2017-18 offseason, as Ohtani also came to the majors in advance of his age-23 season.
Though the financial playing field is fairly level for all 30 teams to make a play for Sasaki’s services, the big-spending Dodgers have long been seen a favorite to sign the right-hander, to the point that agent Joel Wolfe vehemently denied rumors that Sasaki and the Dodgers had already worked out some kind of unofficial agreement. There’s obvious appeal for Sasaki in joining a championship team that already has such Japanese stars as Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto on the roster, though it isn’t known what exactly Sasaki is looking for in a Major League destination (geographic preferences, teams with a pre-existing link to Japanese baseball, smaller or larger markets, etc.). As such, it is easy to imagine Sasaki ending up with the Padres, Mets, Giants, Cubs, or any of the several other teams already known to have some interest in his services.
The Marines’ own financial return from Sasaki’s posting will be limited, as per the terms of the MLB/NPB posting system. In addition to paying Sasaki, a Major League team will have to pay the Marines an extra fee based on the amount of Sasaki’s contract — 20% of a deal’s first $25MM, 17.5% of the next $25MM, and 15% of further spending. Since Sasaki’s deal is naturally limited by the size of bonus pools, the Marines stand to gain less than $2MM for one of Japan’s top pitchers.
Over 394 2/3 career innings with the Marines, Sasaki has a 2.10 ERA, 32.73% strikeout rate, and 5.7% walk rate. His devastating splitter and high-90s (topping 100mph in past seasons) have left NPB batters fooled, most memorably during a perfect game in 2022 that saw Sasaki record 13 straight strikeouts and 19 strikeouts overall. Sasaki then gained worldwide attention by almost throwing another perfect game in his next start, as he tossed eight perfect innings before being removed due to concerns over his pitch count (102 pitches).
The relative lack of mileage on Sasaki’s arm is both a boon for MLB teams eager to land such a talented pitcher at such a young age, and a bit of a concern about a possible lack of durability. Sasaki’s 129 1/3 innings in 2022 remains his career high, and his 2024 season was limited to 111 innings due to a torn oblique and some type of injury to his right arm. That said, these factors have done nothing to limit the hype on Sasaki, and his arrival in Major League Baseball lines up as one of the key stories of the offseason.
