Over the weekend, word broke that Japanese ace Roki Sasaki, two years shy of the 25-year-old age cut-off for getting outside the International Free Agency rules, would be posted for MLB teams to sign this offseason. Because he’s only 23, that means that teams CANNOT offer Sasaki anything more than a traditional IFA signing bonus, ranging roughly from $1 million to $10 million, depending on a variety of factors. After that, he’s just like any other prospect in your system.
In other words, the race to get Roki Sasaki is less of a bidding war, and more of a pure sales pitch on the strength and value of your organization. Whatever team Sasaki ultimately chooses will probably work backwards to get him as big of a signing bonus as they can under the rules, but that isn’t going to the deciding factor. He’s simply going to be able to choose whichever team and city with which he feels most comfortable.
Everyone, and I mean everyone, would bet right now on that team being the Los Angeles Dodgers. There have been longstanding and persistent rumors to that effect, particularly after the Dodgers signed Japanese superstars Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto last offseason. The rumors indicate there is a desire there for Sasaki to join them, and that there may even have been backchannel discussions on both sides or or less cementing that plan. You’ll note that the Dodgers, annually hyper aggressive in international free agency, conspicuously have left bonus pool dollars uncommitted in both this year’s (ends December 15) and next year’s (opens January 15) class. I don’t think they simply dropped the ball. They were insuring themselves to be ready for this moment.
If all of that is true and everyone is right, then what comes next will be entirely window dressing. Pageantry. A show to make it seem as though a decision wasn’t made long before such a decision could be made. It would be, in that way, not unlike what last offseason was for Shohei Ohtani. (In hindsight, it was obviously always going to be the Dodgers.)
If it isn’t true – and I’d give it a 15% chance of being an actual open contest (and within that 15%, the Dodgers would STILL be the prohibitive favorite to win) – then we’re in for some wild stories of meetings and visits and presentations and the like. In that case, it would be more like Shohei Ohtani’s first free agency, where the Cubs, among many other teams including the eventual winner the Angels, actually really did seem to have a shot.
We’ll see. The actual posting may not come for a little while yet. Roki Sasaki’s team announced that they have indeed started the process, but the posting – where negotiations with other teams can begin and a 45-day cutoff kicks in – will probably come later in the month. That’s just my own speculation, but doing so would theoretically allow him to choose between signing in this year’s IFA class or next year’s.
Here’s the official word from the Chiba Lotte Marines, announcing the plan to post Roki Sasaki. Via the Marines and Google Translate:
Comment from Naoki Matsumoto, General Manager of the Baseball Team
“Ever since he joined the team, he has expressed his dream of playing in the United States. After making a comprehensive decision over the past five years, we have decided to respect his wishes. We hope he will do his best as a representative of Japan. We are rooting for him.”Comment from Director Masahito Yoshii
“Of course, it’s a huge blow for the team. However, I’ve played in America myself, so I understand how he feels. I also understand his desire to take on the challenge now, as he’s young. To be honest, there are still many areas where he needs to improve, but I think he can hone himself in America and take his level up even further. When I saw him pitch for the first time in the bullpen at the Ishigakijima training camp in 2020, it was the biggest shock I’ve seen since the first time I saw Nomo Hideo. I hope he can prove that over there. Do your best.”Comment from pitcher Roki Sasaki
“Since joining the team, the team has continued to listen to my thoughts about my future challenge in the MLB, and I am very grateful to the team for now officially allowing me to post. There were many things that did not go well during my five years with the Marines, but I was always supported by my teammates, staff, front office, and fans, and was able to come this far by concentrating only on baseball. I will do my best to work my way up from my minor contract to become the best player in the world, so that I will have no regrets in this one and only baseball career, and so that I can live up to the expectations of everyone who has supported me this time.”
Want that player, man. I dream about the Cubs having even a 1% chance …
If you sense some cognitive dissonance in there from the team, by the way, that could be because Roki Sasaki’s decision not only robs them of their superstar player, but it also costs them upwards of $40-50 million in posting fee (which is what it could be if he’d waiting until he was 25). It’s hard to overstate how devastating this is for Chiba, who technically controls the process, but must’ve felt obligated to proceed this way (either contractually or otherwise).
Speaking of which, it’s hard not to wonder whether we are about to experience a sea change in how NPB players can make their way to MLB via the posting system, long before their team decides unilaterally to do so. We don’t have the facts here on Sasaki’s situation. We don’t know if he strong-armed the team into this in a way that is replicable by other players. We don’t know if his previous one-year contract with the team had some kind of clause that required this. Lots of facts we don’t know. But I can say with confidence that other superstar-potential players in Japan are, as we speak, making sure their representatives find out exactly how Sasaki did it so that they can replicate the process if desired.
I have mixed feelings on all that, because, while I definitely love when Japanese stars come to MLB – especially the Cubs – I don’t know that I’d want to see the NPB just become a de facto player-development league for MLB. Something about that seems wrong, given how long-standing, and well-established that league is.
That is to say, I expect some league-wide shockwaves here, perhaps up to and including a formal reworking of player transfers between NPB and MLB in the years ahead.