DALLAS — Like the rest of Major League Baseball, the Dodgers have closely monitored star Japanese pitcher Roki Sasaki over the last couple years, anxiously waiting for the hard-throwing phenom to come to MLB from Japan.
And now that the 23-year-old has been officially posted for major league teams to sign this offseason, they’re about to find out whether they actually possess what Sasaki is looking for in his next club.
On the second day of MLB’s annual Winter Meetings on Tuesday, Sasaki’s agent, Joel Wolfe of Wasserman Media Group, began to detail such factors during a media scrum turned informal news conference at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas — speaking at length to reporters craving any information about the talented, hard-throwing, potential future ace.
“My first answer is, I’m not entirely sure yet,” Wolfe acknowledged about what Sasaki is looking for in MLB teams. “I’ve known Roki for a little over two years now. And as I’ve gotten to know him, it’s been a little bit difficult to really ascertain what his decision-making process would be for choosing a team, because his focus has been predominantly on whether or not he’s going to be able to post.”
The fact Sasaki is coming to MLB has been major news in its own right.
Because he is not yet 25, he will be restricted to signing a minor-league contract with a modest signing bonus, similar to when Shohei Ohtani joined the Angels for the 2018 season. It was such an uncommon move that, as rumors about Sasaki’s interest in leaving Japan for MLB early circulated over the last couple of years, Wolfe said the “media in Japan has been very tough on him” because “that’s considered in Japan to be very disrespectful and sort of swimming upstream.”
Yet, last month, Sasaki’s Japanese team, the Chiba Lotte Marines, finally announced they would post Sasaki this winter — setting the stage for what will be one of the most intriguing subplots to follow over the rest of the offseason.
The Dodgers, San Diego Padres and New York Yankees are believed to be among the teams most confident in their chances of landing Sasaki, who would be under team control for six years like any normal rookie.
But, as Wolfe detailed Tuesday, the pitcher will enter the process open to a wide range of potential destinations, making him a potential target (at least initially) for all 30 clubs.
“His dream is to come here to the major leagues,” Wolfe said. “[But] I think that he hasn’t really wrapped his head around the individual teams and the individual cities. He just doesn’t really know much about them.”
One pressing question is whether Sasaki wants to play with fellow Japanese big-leaguers or forge his own path with a team without a history of star players from the country.
Wolfe said Sasaki “could be” attracted to a team with veteran Japanese players already on the team, but wouldn’t “necessarily need it to succeed.”
If Sasaki does want to play with other Japanese players, the Dodgers should be well-positioned. Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto were both teammates of Sasaki’s on Japan’s victorious World Baseball Classic team in 2023. Yamamoto is also represented by Wolfe.
The Padres, of course, have their own such draw in Yu Darvish, another WBC teammate who reportedly has a close relationship with Sasaki.
“He has paid attention to what his WBC teammates have done,” Wolfe said of Sasaki. “And just watching what other Japanese players in the major leagues are doing and how they are doing.”
Sasaki has also “paid attention to how teams have done, as far as overall success, both this year and years past,” Wolfe said, another potentially positive sign given the Dodgers’ 2024 World Series title and recent dominance of the National League West.
On the other hand, Wolfe said Sasaki has not mentioned having any preference to play on the West Coast, as other Japanese players have in the past.
Furthermore, while Sasaki isn’t opposed to playing in a big media market, smaller and mid-market teams could offer “a soft landing coming from Japan,” Wolfe said, “given what he’s been through and not having an enjoyable experience with the media.”
“I really don’t know how he looks at it yet,” Wolfe reiterated, “because I haven’t had a chance to really sit down and discuss it with him in great detail.”
Wolfe said he plans to meet with Sasaki in the coming days to begin discussing the player’s preferences, and to review early proposals teams have already begun to submit (Wolfe sent a memo to clubs over the weekend soliciting presentations).
From there, Wolfe and Sasaki will meet with teams at a central location. Sasaki could also make visits to finalists in January, after he returns from Japan for the holidays.
One factor Wolfe downplayed on Tuesday was the differences in bonus pools each team has to try and sign Sasaki with.
Though the Dodgers had the most remaining money to spend on their 2024 international class, Sasaki’s decision to wait until the 2025 period opens next month threatened to leave the team at a disadvantage. While other teams have as much as $7.5 million in their 2025 pool, the Dodgers are stuck with an MLB-low $5.146 million thanks to luxury tax penalties and their signing of Ohtani last year (since he had rejected a qualifying offer from the Angels).
However, Wolfe noted such differences would be “so negligible” that he wouldn’t advise him to “make a decision based on that.”
Instead, Sasaki will enter his restricted free agency seemingly open to all sorts of possibilities.
And after years of waiting on the Japanese star, the Dodgers are about to get their chance to pitch themselves as the best one.
