When Joel Wolfe, the agent for pitcher Roki Sasaki, addressed reporters at the Winter Meetings, he had already begun receiving inquiries from a handful of major league teams. One week later, it’s still anybody’s guess where the free agent pitcher will sign.
Because Sasaki is 23 years old and lacks the requisite experience pitching at the highest level in Japan, he is limited to a signing bonus within a team’s international amateur spending pool limit. Salary is effectively a non-issue for teams interested in signing Sasaki.
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While the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres are still listed as the favorites to sign Sasaki, some of that speculation might be inertia. Logically, both teams have made sense as destinations from the beginning of his free agency.
The Dodgers are the defending World Series champions, and have a pair of established Japanese stars in Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto who can help a countryman with his transition to the United States. Yamamoto is also represented by Wolfe.
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The Padres nearly upset the Dodgers in the second round of the playoffs and likewise have an established Japanese star on their roster in Yu Darvish, who’s also represented by Wolfe.
“I think it’s a good thing if he were to come to San Diego,” Darvish recently said through interpreter Shingo Horie. “Just for myself personally, if it does happen, yeah, it’s a great thing for me as well. But we’ll see how things shake out.”
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The Colorado Rockies, a mid-market team with a hitter-friendly ballpark, were among the first teams to reach out to Wolfe with interest in Sasaki.
Joel Wolfe, agent for just-posted Japanese RHP Roki Sasaki, acknowledged that the #Rockies were one of the first three teams to contact him with interest. Saskia, 23, is considered an international amateur who is limited to a Minor League contract/international bonus pool money.
— Thomas Harding (@harding_at_mlb) December 10, 2024
Baseball America recently listed the Texas Rangers as the number-3 most likely destination for Sasaki, behind Los Angeles and San Diego, and ahead of the New York Mets, New York Yankees, Baltimore Orioles, and Boston Red Sox.
Could the St. Louis Cardinals also be in play? Writing on STLtoday.com, Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes they “do not expect to be among the teams that reach the final round for Sasaki, but they don’t know until they try.”
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“Sasaki is going to want a team that is also set up to develop pitchers, and the Cardinals are not there yet. They say they will be,” Goold writes. “They say they want to get there, to a place like Cleveland, Milwaukee, Dodgers, etc. — to get to the development facilities and ability that those teams have and that Sasaki wants.”
Sasaki will not finalize his contract before Jan. 15, when the 2025 international amateur signing period begins. Although some players prefer the spotlight that comes with playing in a large media market, Sasaki could prove to be the exception.
“I think there’s an argument to be made that a small- or mid-market team might be more beneficial to him as a soft landing coming from Japan, given what he’s been through and not having an enjoyable experience with the media (in Japan),” Wolfe told reporters last week in Dallas.
When he was 20, Sasaki threw a 19-strikeout perfect game for the Chiba Lotte Marines in 2022. In his next start, he threw eight more perfect innings in a row. In the 2023 World Baseball Classic, his fastball sat 100 mph. Last season, Sasaki went 10-5 with a 2.35 ERA in 18 starts for Chiba Lotte, with 129 strikeouts in 111 innings.
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