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There is now a more defined pathway for Japanese star pitcher Roki Sasaki to join Major League Baseball, but his entry is poised to create collateral damage across the sport.
Soon after Sasaki’s current team, the Chiba Lotte Marines of Nippon Professional Baseball, announced plans to post him, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said the 23-year-old will likely be part of the league’s 2025 international signing period that begins Jan. 15. That makes the most economic sense for Sasaki, as the international bonus pools will be reset for all 30 clubs, and the pitcher will be in line for a bonus perhaps as high as $7.56 million. It’s also the most beneficial for the Marines, who will gain a posting fee equal to 20% of his contract’s guaranteed value.
The situation, however, also means MLB clubs that already have non-binding, verbal agreements with international players, particularly Latin American teenagers, will almost certainly back out of some of those deals to conserve bonus pool money to pursue Sasaki. The pitcher is a potentially generational talent, having already put up a 2.02 career earned run average and 524 strikeouts in just 414.2 innings in four seasons of pro experience in Japan.
Ordinarily, a top-of-the-rotation MLB pitcher of Sasaki’s caliber would command a salary well into eight figures annually, and far above what his forthcoming bonus will be. As a point of context, Yoshinobu Yamamoto signed a 12-year, $325 million contract with the Dodgers last year, when he was 25.
The Sasaki situation also exposes two long-problematic situations in MLB’s international signing system: placing established Japanese professionals under 25 years old in the same talent pool with unproven amateurs from other parts of the world, and the lack of structure around verbal deals that precede the formal beginning of the signing period. In Latin America, particularly, the talent development system is still rife with corruption, even as the league has sought to root out problems. Unwritten deals with international amateurs are technically banned, but their continued existence is an open secret in the sport.
The Dodgers remain a favorite to sign Sasaki, given the club’s extensive ties already in Japan, and rumors of a likely deal there have already grown to the point where his agent, Joel Wolfe of Wasserman, recently sought to quell that chatter. Manfred, meanwhile, said the league office will be seeking to keep the entire process in line with established rules.
“We’re going to see what happens there,” he said. “If there’s any reason to believe that there was a violation of one of our rules, you can rest assured that we will thoroughly investigate and try to get to the bottom of it.”
World Tour Winnowed
Manfred, meanwhile, said that previously planned international games for 2025 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Mexico City will not happen. Economic issues were part of the decisions, but MLB is also looking to put more emphasis on a two-game series in Tokyo between the Cubs and Dodgers that will open the 2025 season.
“We had a really, really aggressive international play undertaking last season. … But we’ve been to Mexico the last few years in a row, and we’re taking one year off. We’ll be back, though,” Manfred said.
MLB is also looking to return to San Juan as soon as the 2026 season. The Tokyo games, however, will additionally mark a homecoming for Los Angeles stars Shohei Ohtani and Yamamoto, and follow record-setting viewership posted in Japan during the recent Dodgers-Yankees World Series.
“Tokyo is really our focus right now for very, very good business reasons,” Manfred said.
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