Why 23-Year-Old Phenom Roki Sasaki Will Be MLB’s Biggest Bargain

Japanese star pitcher Roki Sasaki is being posted for entry to Major League Baseball, a move destined to help reshape the league’s offseason hot stove period. 

Nippon Professional Baseball’s Chiba Lotte Marines said Saturday that they will make the 23-year-old Sasaki available to MLB teams, bringing one of the game’s top young talents into the open market. Already with four seasons of pro experience in Japan, Sasaki boasts a 2.02 career earned run average and has struck out 524 batters in just 414.2 innings—totals boosted by a blazing fastball that has topped 102 miles per hour coupled with a wipeout slider. He also has pitched a perfect game. 

Because of Sasaki’s age, he will be classified as an international amateur free agent and be subject to bonus pool limits imposed on MLB teams. That structure will mean his initial MLB contract will be no larger than seven figures in size, and he will be under club control through the 2030 season. The team that acquires Sasaki will pay the Marines a posting fee equal to 20% of his contract’s guaranteed value. 

That situation differs materially from the 12-year, $325 million contract the Dodgers signed late last year with fellow Japanese star Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who was 25 at the time of his deal. But Sasaki’s path does resemble that of Shohei Ohtani, who initially signed with the Angels in 2017 for a $2.3 million bonus and a league-minimum salary that, at the time, was $545,000 per season.

As a result, nearly every MLB team is in play to land Sasaki. That will be particularly true if Sasaki is posted in mid-December or later. The current international signing period runs through Dec. 15, but a new one for 2025 starts a month later, when all clubs will have a full complement of bonus pools. 

If Sasaki is posted sooner, though, the Dodgers would have a clear advantage, as they still have $2.5 million left in their 2024 bonus pool, more than any other MLB club. A specific timetable for the posting, however, has not been determined. Had Chiba Lotte waited another two years, they would have received a much larger posting fee, similar to the more than $60 million the Orix Buffaloes received after Yamamoto joined the Dodgers. But Sasaki won out in his desire to make the jump now. 

“From the time he joined the organization, we were told by [Sasaki] of his dream to play in America,” said Chiba Lotte GM Naoki Matsumoto in a statement. “Taking into account the last five years as a whole, we have decided to prioritize his thoughts. We are hoping he does his best as a representative of Japan. We are cheering for him.”

Bigger Picture

Despite the more level playing field, the Dodgers and Padres have been widely seen as the favorites to land Sasaki—for a variety of reasons including relative geographic proximity to Japan. 

Because of the low cost to obtain a talent of this level, the Sasaki situation is not expected to have any direct bearing on the ongoing race to land outfielder Juan Soto, the top player in MLB’s current free-agent class. Soto is expected to land a deal of at least $600 million, which would be the second-largest contract in U.S. pro sports history, and perhaps beat Ohtani’s current, $700 million pact with the Dodgers in present-day value.