The Los Angeles Dodgers Have Landed Roki Sasaki

Main League Baseball had its “Kevin Durant is a Warrior” second on Friday, when 23-year-old Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki agreed to signal with the defending World Sequence champion Los Angeles Dodgers for $6.5 million. Sasaki himself introduced his determination through his Instagram, whereas his bonus was reported on X by The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya and Alden González of ESPN.

If he can keep wholesome, Sasaki is a probable front-of-the-rotation arm who has the expertise to win Cy Younger Awards. When he’s been totally operational, his fastball has averaged almost 99 mph, he has an elite splitter, and his slider grew to become a useable weapon in 2022. He joins a loaded Dodgers roster that has 5 – 6 different gamers who both have gained a Cy Younger or MVP (Freddie Freeman, Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Blake Snell), or may conceivably accomplish that of their greatest season (Tyler Glasnow and possibly Yoshinobu Yamamoto). One and a half of these gamers weren’t even on final 12 months’s Dodgers title workforce. As I’m penning this, the Dodgers haven’t but introduced the signing. Although Sasaki’s contract is technically a minor league deal, and he isn’t but on the 40-man roster, he’s overwhelmingly more likely to break camp with the Dodgers’ massive league membership and be a part of their squad that opens the season in opposition to the Cubs in Japan on March 18-19.

Sasaki didn’t have his peak stuff in 2024 (extra on that under), however in his 4 NPB seasons – 414 2/3 IP, 275 H, 0.883 WHIP (lol), 524 Okay, 91 BB, 2.02 ERA – he has not less than met, and arguably exceeded, the all-world expectations foisted upon him since he was in highschool. He has been a considered as a generational expertise, the LeBron James of Japanese baseball if you’ll, since his junior 12 months. His exploits in Japan have been Herculean. Sasaki’s fastball was touching 101 in highschool; he as soon as threw almost 500 pitches in an eight-day span, together with a 12-inning, 194-pitch full recreation throughout which he additionally hit the game-winning two-run homer.

He was the primary decide within the 2019 NPB Draft by the Chiba Lotte Marines, had a sub-2.00 ERA in his 2021 rookie season, after which transcended the game in 2022 when he threw 17 consecutive good innings that April. The 6-foot-2 righty retired 52 consecutive batters throughout that stretch, greater than the MLB file of 47. It was at this level that Sasaki grew to become one thing approaching a world family identify. His fastball averaged simply shy of 99 mph and touched 103 mph in 2022, making him the hardest-throwing pitcher within the historical past of NPB. He was having a fair higher 2023 – 85 IP, 39% Okay%, 5% BB%, 62% GB%, 1.88 ERA, 0.92 FIP — earlier than he was shut down with an indirect tear that July. It price him to many of the remainder of that season.

Then in 2024, Sasaki missed time with shoulder soreness, and his stuff was down when he pitched. His strikeout-to-walk ratio was roughly halved in comparison with 2023. Listed here are some splits illustrating the dip:

His bouts with damage mixed with this dip in efficiency create some danger that we’ve already seen Sasaki’s peak. He’s a spindly man with a really violent supply, and accidents may conceivably be one thing he offers with continuously. This, plus the Dodgers’ unbelievable depth of beginning pitchers, means Sasaki will be dealt with with excessive warning in his first 12 months if the Dodgers so select. He’ll possible present premium charge efficiency and fewer when it comes to innings quantity, not less than initially. If Sasaki’s fastball returns to its prior stage of efficiency and his physique retains getting stronger into his mid- and late-20s, then we’re speaking a few frequent Cy Younger candidate within the mould of Kevin Gausman or Nathan Eovaldi, besides Sasaki signed for simply $6.5 million and is topic to the identical six-year window of workforce management as every other rookie.

The Dodgers started the 2025 Worldwide Signing Interval with a $5,146,200 bonus pool, tied for the second lowest in baseball. Sasaki’s deal is reportedly for $6.5 million. MLB guidelines dictate that groups can commerce for as much as 60% of their authentic pool house, which places Los Angeles’ most potential pool at simply over $8.2 million. The Dodgers made two trades for bonus house on Friday, one with the Phillies (for prospect Dylan Campbell) and one with the Reds (for prospect Arnaldo Lantigua) for a mixed whole someplace within the vary of $2.25—$2.5 million in extra house. (The specifics of the Phillies deal are unknown however have a $250,000 vary.) Within the days main as much as the beginning of the 2025 worldwide signing interval on January 15, three prospects who had verbal agreements with the Dodgers modified groups: Darell Morel (Pirates), Oscar Patiño (White Sox), Teilon Serrano (Twins). All three appear to have finished so of their very own volition — although possible in response to the danger that Sasaki can be a Dodger — and obtained extra money from their new groups than they have been slated to obtain from Los Angeles. Cuban journalist Francys Romero reported that the Dodgers intend to honor their different agreements, which they’ll must get finished with, at most, roughly $1.7 million (their $8.2 max pool minus Sasaki’s bonus). The ripple results of Sasaki’s signing — which to this point are these prospects’ altering organizations for extra money and a few bonus house trades that included marginal prospects — have been comparatively benign.

The place ought to Sasaki fall on Ben Clemens’ annual midseason Commerce Worth rankings? If he’s wholesome and productive on a rookie deal, with six years of workforce management, one may argue he belongs in Paul Skenes and Elly De La Cruz territory, in the course of the highest 10. The excess worth of Sasaki’s deal for the Dodgers is sort of incalculable. Along with his signing bonus and league minimal rookie wage, the Dodgers might want to pay Sasaki’s NPB membership, Chiba Lotte Marines, a 20% posting payment of $1.3 million. It makes their first-year outlay for Sasaki about $8.5 million once you embody his league-minimum wage. That’s lower than the primary three picks within the 2024 draft acquired for his or her bonuses. Sasaki’s on-field efficiency is more likely to outpace his wage a number of instances over, plus he’s additionally now an intercontinental superstar within the second-largest media market within the U.S., on the workforce with the game’s greatest international star, and producing curiosity and income on either side of the Pacific Ocean. That is as quintessential an instance of “the wealthy get richer” as you’ll discover in sports activities, the place newbie participant acquisition is sort of all the time tailor-made to funnel elite younger expertise to the unhealthy groups.

Will the focus of expertise in Los Angeles trigger significant disillusionment amongst baseball followers? As excited as everyone seems to be to observe Sasaki pitch, our tradition tends to tire and make villains of dynastic sports activities franchises. One of many many (seemingly spurious) issues that Sasaki’s agent, Joel Wolfe, acknowledged publicly throughout a poorly mic’d Winter Conferences press convention was that Sasaki didn’t have an pleasurable expertise with the media in Japan, going as far as to say it is perhaps helpful for him to land in a small market with a view to keep away from extra of it. Effectively, now Sasaki has chosen the antithesis of that. He’s deliberately transferring into the place the place the highlight is already shining brightest, and the place most baseball followers look with ire on the reigning champs. Is $6.5 million sufficient to topic your self to schadenfreude from swaths of three totally different nations within the occasion that the 2025 Dodgers are the 2012 Marlins or 2011 Eagles? Is “begrudging respect” Sasaki’s cultural ceiling? These are rather more troublesome questions that can take years to reply.