The race to sign Roki Sasaki is looking less like a sprint and more like a middle-distance run.
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 his NPB team, the Chiba Lotte Marines. Once he's posted, Sasaki will have 45 days to finalize a new contract with a major league team.
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The timing of the posting will affect Sasaki's signing bonus. 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.
Commissioner Rob Manfred, speaking at the MLB owners' meetings Wednesday, told reporters that he expects Sasaki to sign after Jan. 15.
"It looks like ... the signing there will happen in the new pool period," Manfred said, via Drellich on Twitter/X.
Rob Manfred says Roki Sasaki is expected to be part of the 2025 international signing class: "It looks like ... the signing there will happen in the new pool period"
— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) November 20, 2024By virtue of Sasaki's age, he will be subject to Major League Baseball's international amateur signing rules. Rather than competing with Corbin Burnes, Blake Snell, and another top-of-the-market pitchers for hundreds of millions of dollars, Sasaki will be subject to the limits of each team's international signing bonus pool money.
However, Sasaki's raw talent is considered in line with the best pitchers in baseball, prompting teams like the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers to send front-office officials to Japan in recent months to meet with the pitcher.
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The Dodgers are considered the favorites to sign Sasaki within the industry.
At 20 years old, Sasaki threw a 19-strikeout perfect game for the Marines in 2022. In his next start, he threw eight more perfect innings. In the 2023 World Baseball Classic, his fastball sat 100 mph. Sasaki went 10-5 with a 2.35 ERA in 18 starts for Chiba Lotte in 2024, with 129 strikeouts in 111 innings.
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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.
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.
Now, Sasaki will look to follow a similar path.
More to come on this story from Newsweek Sports.
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