Dodgers sign Japanese star pitcher Roki Sasaki

For the third time in 13 months, the Dodgers are signing a Japanese superstar.

And this time, the club reached a deal Friday to sign 23-year-old pitcher Roki Sasaki for a $6.5 million signing bonus, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to do so. . speak publicly.

Sasaki announced he was signing with the Dodgers in an Instagram post.

A powerful right-hander with a tantalizing repertoire of splitters and sliders, Sasaki was assigned last month by his Japanese professional baseball league club, the Chiba Lotte Marines, and actually became eligible to sign on Wednesday, when the international signing period opened.

Because he is not yet 25, MLB’s international signing rules limited him to taking a minor league contract; like when Shohei Ohtani first signed with the Japan Angels for $2.3 million in 2018.

The situation made Sasaki a prime target for the Dodgers and much of the rest of the majors this winter, adding to the value of a pitcher with a 2.10 ERA in four seasons in Japan. Under his restrictions, Sasaki will be under team control with a minimum salary for six seasons. Given his promise as a burgeoning star, this has made him one of the most coveted players on this free agent market.

The Dodgers were always considered his most likely destination. They have a winning record, having won their second World Series title in five seasons and their 11th division title since 2013. They are renowned for their ability to develop pitchers (despite a recent injury trend). And they boast two former Team Japan teammates, Sasaki, Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who signed a 12-year, $325 million contract last offseason as an unrestricted free agent from Japan.

Had Sasaki waited two more years, he could have rivaled Yamamoto’s deal — the largest contract for a pitcher, excluding Ohtani, in MLB history. However, Sasaki’s dream was to play in the majors, according to his agent, Joel Wolfe of Wasserman Media Group. And now he’ll make it happen in a Dodgers uniform, likely starting with the team’s season-opening trip to Tokyo in March.

The Dodgers didn’t really need Sasaki to bolster their World Series title defense. After nearly being derailed by pitching issues in the postseason, they signed two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell in free agency, expecting Ohtani, Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May to return from injuries, and count on better health from Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow. Clayton Kershaw is also expected to re-sign.

Lacking starting pitchers, they weren’t.

Sasaki, however, gives the team a piece that every club covets: elite young pitchers with a cost-controlled salary scale.

Sasaki could make as little as the league minimum in his first two seasons and then get annual raises through arbitration. In Ohtani’s six seasons in Anaheim, for comparison, the two-way star earned less than $40 million while winning two Most Valuable Player awards. Sasaki has the potential to be an equally astonishing bargain.

Although money was not the main factor in Sasaki’s decision, the Dodgers had to work around some financial constraints. With the most money left in their international bonus pool for last year’s promotion, Sasaki and his agents (in conjunction with MLB boards) decided that the pitcher would not sign until 2025 , in order to “ensure that it would go well”. a fair and level playing field for everyone,” Wolfe said.

Because of luxury tax penalties, the Dodgers’ $5.1 million bonus pool is the smallest in the majors, behind some teams with more than $7.5 million to spend. Still, they were among the handful of teams that secured an initial interview with Sasaki at Wasserman’s Southern California offices last month. And this week, while other clubs like the San Francisco Giants, New York Yankees and New York Mets were informed they were out of the running, the Dodgers were saving money from their international bonus pool.

Several top Latin American prospects expected to sign with the Dodgers ultimately landed elsewhere, after the team communicated to its commits that they would have to wait to sign until after the Sasaki sweepstakes. Meanwhile, the team explored potential trades to acquire more bonus money.

That made the Dodgers an obvious contender, but they weren’t the only ones.

The San Diego Padres have long been considered the Dodgers’ biggest rival in Sasaki’s free agency. Like the Dodgers, they had a former teammate from the World Baseball Classic, veteran pitcher Yu Darvish. And despite a recent ownership dispute that led to a lawsuit filed last week, their product on the field has remained strong, giving Sasaki another competitor on the West Coast with ties to Japan to consider.

The Toronto Blue Jays were also finalists. The pitcher held a second round of meetings with all three teams last week.

Earlier Friday, speculation surrounding the Blue Jays’ pursuit intensified when they acquired an additional $2 million in bonuses following a trade with Cleveland, giving Toronto more than $3 million more to spend on a possible signing bonus.

However, all roads ultimately led to Los Angeles — where the Dodgers also acquired additional bonuses in a trade with the Philadelphia Phillies for outfield prospect Dylan Campbell on Friday, according to a person with knowledge of the situation and not authorized to speak publicly. .

The Dodgers’ speech to Sasaki was strong from several angles. Their newfound popularity in Japan – born from the signings of Ohtani and Yamamoto, and lucrative thanks to the potential marketing opportunities they provide for players such as Sasaki – has helped them. So has their talent-rich roster and track record of helping pitchers develop.

When the team held its second meeting with Sasaki, star players were in attendance, underscoring the club’s message as Major League Baseball’s premier destination. And now Sasaki will have the chance to immediately compete for a World Series, becoming an instant factor in his title defense.

In Sasaki, the Dodgers will have a 6-foot-3 pitcher armed with all the tools necessary to succeed in the big league. His fastball has reached over 102 mph, according to scouting reports, and averages in the upper 90s.

Sasaki’s two best pitches, a late biting splitter and an ever-improving slider, also wowed scouts during his Japanese career, which included two All-Star selections and a perfect game in 2022. Dodgers evaluators have since considered Sasaki has long been one of the best. launchers of the world, devoting considerable international scouting efforts to it in recent years.

Sasaki endured deep personal tragedy as a child, when his father and grandparents were killed in a tsunami in 2011, when he was just 9 years old. This story added to the support and popularity he received in his home country as a young player who rose to fame. But it also increased the attention he received from the country’s vast array of media outlets and tabloids.

When Sasaki began considering his early jump to the MLB – a controversial decision for many in Japan, especially for a pitcher who had accumulated 100 innings only twice in his career – the public pressures the pitcher faced grew. are intensified, according to Wolfe.

“There has been a lot of negativity in the media towards him because he expressed interest in playing for MLB at such a young age,” Wolfe said. “This is seen in Japan as very disrespectful and a kind of swimming against the tide.”

Yet after remaining in Japan amid rumors of a potential assignment last offseason, Chiba Lotte announced in November that he would allow him to leave.

“As soon as he joined the organization, he told us his dream of playing in America,” Chiba Lotte general manager Naoki Matsumoto said in a statement in Japanese. “Taking into account all of the last five years, we decided to prioritize his thoughts. We hope he will do his best as Japan’s representative. We encourage it.

In that same announcement, Sasaki also set a new goal.

“To have no regrets in my one and only baseball career, and to be able to live up to the expectations of those who pushed me behind my back, I am doing my best to get out of a minor league contract,” he said, “to become the world’s No. 1 player.”

These noble ambitions match Sasaki’s great potential. And, as they had hoped for so long, the Dodgers were the team he chose to try to make it happen, putting a celebratory salute to another successful offseason.