The Los Angeles Dodgers are considered the favorites to sign Roki Sasaki within the baseball industry. ESPN's Buster Olney, speaking on the Baseball Tonight podcast, recently said that opinion isn't just overwhelming; it's unanimous.
Pitcher Dallas Keuchel, who played with Sasaki on the Chiba Lotte Marines, took it a step further, telling Joel Sherman of the New York Post "I heard some, some rumblings about a done deal with the Dodgers — you know, having a plan for him."
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Wasserman's Joel Wolfe, the agent for Sasaki, has already done much to dispel those rumors.
Wednesday, Wolfe took umbrage with the fact that the rumors even exist.
"While a bunch of executives who should know me better and do a lot of business with me insult my integrity by insinuating that I would be a part of some type of nefarious agreement," Wolfe told The Athletic, "in reality, this is just poor sportsmanship."
The Dodgers declined comment for the story by Evan Drellich.
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Sasaki, the 23-year-old pitcher who recently announced his intent to leave Japan for Major League Baseball, has yet to be formally posted by the Marines. Once he's posted, Sasaki will have 45 days to finalize a new contract with a major league team.
If he signs after Jan. 15 — the first day of the 2025 international amateur signing period — Sasaki will be limited to about $7.6 million, according to figures posted by Baseball America, plus any international signing bonus money teams are able to acquire via trade in the interim. If he signs earlier, his bonus will be even less.
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Commissioner Rob Manfred, speaking at the MLB owners' meetings Wednesday, told reporters that he expects Sasaki to sign after Jan. 15.
Although it is rare for Japanese players to forego millions of dollars that come with the right to enter MLB as a major league free agent, Shohei Ohtani followed the same process when he left NPB to sign with the Los Angeles Angels in Dec. 2017.
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Technically, Ohtani's first contract with the Angels was a minor league deal; he was not "promoted" to the majors until spring training of 2018. Six years later, Ohtani signed a 10-year, $700 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
MLB reportedly held strict parameters around teams signing Ohtani to a long-term contract extension in 2017 as a way to circumvent its restrictions on international amateurs. The same rules apply to Sasaki.
"If there's any reason to believe that there was a violation of one of our rules," Manfred said (via Drellich), "you can rest assured that we will thoroughly investigate and try to get to the bottom of it."
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