On October 1, two Dodgers executives were on the other side of the world.
Shortly after the regular season ended, president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and vice president of player personnel Galen Carr were in Japan on a scouting tour.
The focus of their efforts is prodigy pitcher Roki Sasaki.
For the past few years, the Dodgers’ executive staff has idolized Sasaki, who boasts a scintillating arsenal highlighted by a triple-digit fastball. The only uncertainty was when the right-hander would cross the Pacific.
They received their answer late Friday night.
The Chiba Lotte Marines, Sasaki’s team in the Nippon Professional Baseball League, revealed that the 23-year-old standout will be available for Major League Baseball teams to sign this winter.
“From the time he joined the organization, we were told by him of his dream to play in America,” Chiba Lotte general manager Naoki Matsumoto said in a release. “We opted to highlight his opinions throughout the last five years. We hope he does well as a representation of Japan. We root for him.”
In Los Angeles, the Dodgers’ offseason has just become a lot more fascinating.
While Sasaki lacks the big-league experience of other top free-agent pitchers, he is regarded as having enormous potential and, because to MLB regulations governing overseas free agents, will be allowed to sign for a fraction of the cost.
Had Sasaki waited two more years, he would have been able to sign as a regular free agent. Last winter, the Dodgers signed Yoshinobu Yamamoto to a record $325 million contract when he arrived from Japan. Sasaki might have been positioned to compete with it.
However, because Sasaki is under the age of 25, he will be confined to a minor-league contract with a tiny signing bonus, comparable to how Shohei Ohtani, then 23, signed with the Angels before the 2018 season for only $2.3 million.
Sasaki, like Ohtani, will be under club control with whichever team he joins for six seasons, just like any other rookie.
It makes Sasaki an ideal target for the Dodgers: a gifted, young, cost-effective arm to bolster, if not significantly enhance, their starting rotation.
The Dodgers have spent a significant amount of time scouting Sasaki over the last few seasons. Last winter, the team had hoped he would be posted. However, following a drawn-out saga with his Japanese teammates, Sasaki decided to stay.
He had one of his most complete seasons, winning a career-high ten games and posting a 2.35 earned run average. And one of his best starts came on the day Friedman was in attendance: a complete game with one run and ten strikeouts.
“Pitched well,” was all Friedman would say a few days later.
Sasaki is likely to become one of the Dodgers’ top offseason targets now that his organization has begun the process of posting him — his potential signing bonus reportedly will depend on whether he is classed in the 2024 or 2025 international signing class, but it will not be much more than Ohtani’s.
The team already includes two Japanese stars, Ohtani and Yamamoto, who defied the belief that Japanese big leaguers prefer not to play on the same team. And the Dodgers would give Sasaki the opportunity to immediately contend for a World Series championship, entering 2025 as defending champions and favourites to repeat — especially if they could improve their starting pitching.
“Obviously, we can never have enough pitching, as we’ve learned,” Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes said Wednesday, after the team won the championship despite having one of the most injury-prone pitching staffs. “So pitching will be a priority.”
Gomes declined to mention Sasaki during his media scrum at the general manager’s meetings in San Antonio because the pitcher had not yet been posted. However, Sasaki’s potential speaks for itself.
While he struggled with durability in Japan, pitching more than 100 innings in only two of his four seasons, he maintained a 2.10 ERA and an average of 11.4 strikeouts per nine innings.
“From the time I joined the organization until now, I only have gratitude for how they have continuously lent me their ear regarding my future challenge in MLB and now given me permission to be posted,” Sasaki stated in his own tongue.
“There were many difficult periods during my five years with the Marines, but I was always supported by teammates, staffers, the front office, and fans, and I was able to get to this point by focusing solely on baseball. So that I don’t have regrets in my one and only baseball career, and so that I may live up to the expectations of people who pushed me, I work hard to ascend from a little league contract to become the world’s finest player.”
To repeat, his ambition is to become the best player in the world.
There will be a long line of teams attempting to woo Sasaki. Like Ohtani, his modest cost and highly touted skill set will attract a wide range of possible suitors. However, there has been significant conjecture in the industry that the Dodgers are the favourites to sign him.
They got Ohtani. They got Yamamoto. They’ve been scouting Sasaki for several years, waiting for the day he’ll be next.
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