Chiba Lotte Marines send Japanese star Roki Sasaki to MLB

The Chiba Lotte Marines announced Saturday that they will begin drafting Roki Sasaki, the Japanese right-hander considered one of the most talented pitchers in the world, paving the way for the 23-year-old to enter the major leagues in 2025 to get into baseball.

The posting system is the transfer method between MLB and Nippon Professional Baseball, making it available to all 30 teams.

“I am very grateful to the team for officially allowing me to post,” Sasaki said in a statement posted on X by the Marines. “During my five years in the Marines, a lot of things didn’t go well, but I was able to get to this point by just focusing on baseball with the support of my teammates, staff, front office and fans do my best to work my way up from my small contract to become the best player in the world, that I will have no regrets about my only baseball career and that I will live up to the expectations of everyone who supported me.

Nicknamed “The Monster of the Reiwa Era,” Sasaki throws a fastball that regularly reaches triple digits and complements it with a split-finger frontline fastball and a slider.

Because of his age, Sasaki is considered an international amateur free agent and can only sign a minor league contract, which drastically limits how much teams can pay him — and how much Lotte makes through the associated 20% posting fee. Players who are at least 25 years old and have played in a foreign league for six years are eligible to sign major league contracts upon being drafted. Had he waited, Sasaki could have sought a deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars, similar to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers in late December for 12 years, $325 million. Instead, Sasaki, who asked to be drafted last year but was rejected by the team, will follow a similar path to Shohei Ohtani, the superstar who entered the MLB at 23 and signed with the Los Angeles Angels for $2.3 million .

The timing of Sasaki’s deployment – which sources say has yet to be determined – will determine whether he falls into the 2024 or 2025 international amateur bracket. When a player is drafted, he has a 45-day window to sign with a major league team. Although Sasaki would join an organization on a minor league contract, a team can add him to the major league roster before the 2025 season.

The international amateur bonus pools are limited, with the top teams able to spend just over $7.1 million this year, the bigger, higher-spending teams $4.6 million, and the rest in between. Teams can add up to 60% of their allocated pools by trading for other teams’ bonus pool money. Most teams have already spent the majority of their 2024 bonus pools, with the signing period for international free agents running from January 15th to December 15th annually.

If the official posting were delayed until mid-December – the process normally takes weeks to complete – Sasaki could sign when the 2025 international period begins on January 15. Although most teams have player commitments during this period – the highest bonus pools are around $7.5 million and the lowest are around $5.1 million. They could trade for international bonus spots or free up money by reneging on non-binding commitments made to teenagers from Latin American countries, which is rare but not unheard of.

For a player with Sasaki’s talent, teams will likely do everything they can to convince him to sign him.

Sasaki became Japan’s national star five years ago during Koshien, the national high school baseball tournament, one of the country’s biggest annual sporting events. In eight days, he threw more than 500 pitches, including a complete game of 12 innings, 21 strikeouts, and 194 pitches.

In 2022, Sasaki pitched a perfect game with 19 strikeouts for Lotte at age 20 and followed that up with eight more perfect innings in his next start a week later before being retired. Sasaki’s tremendous fastball velocity that he displayed during the 2023 World Baseball Classic – he averaged 100.5 mph in Japan’s semifinal start against Mexico – made him known to an international audience, and despite Lotte’s request, after the 2023 season to move to the MLB, the inevitability of his departure only grew.

Sasaki didn’t sign his 2024 contract until January, just before Lotte began spring training. Rarely do players wait until then to sign their contracts, and the episode was a precursor to what was to come after a 10-5 season in which Sasaki posted a 2.35 ERA, struck out 129, walked 32 and gave up two home runs 111 innings.

Often, players are used when Japanese teams feel they have “earned” the privilege, according to multiple sources familiar with previous posts. Although Sasaki showed flashes in his 394⅔ innings – 29-15 with a 2.10 ERA and 505 strikeouts with 88 walks in 64 starts over four seasons – he would not come into the MLB with the same record as his predecessors.

The stirring success of Japanese players in the MLB has been one of the game’s biggest stories of the last decade, featuring soon-to-be three-time MVP Ohani, Yamamoto, left-handers Shota Imanaga (Chicago Cubs) and Yusei Kikuchi (free agent). ) and outfielders Seiya Suzuki (Cubs) and Masataka Yoshida (Boston Red Sox), all of whom are going through the posting system. Right-hander Kodai Senga moved to the New York Mets for free after eleven seasons with the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks.

MLB teams had prepared for the possibility that Lotte would keep Sasaki for at least two more years, allowing him to turn 25 and the organization to reap the full financial benefit of the draft. NPB teams control player rights for nine seasons before reaching free agency and can operate outside of the posting system. If Lotte had waited until after the 2026 season, the company could have received tens of millions of dollars through the entry fee paid by the acquiring team. The Dodgers paid the Orix Blue Wave more than $50 million after signing Yamamoto.

Los Angeles will be heavily linked to Sasaki, but assuming he goes to the Dodgers is premature. While the presence of Sasaki’s Samurai Japan teammates Ohtani and Yamamoto in Los Angeles is an advantage, the attention they attract – and the media horde that follows them – adds a different element than other teams.

Throughout the 2024 season, MLB baseball presidents and general managers were an integral part of Sasaki’s starts. Sasaki is close to right-hander Yu Darvish, whose team, the San Diego Padres, is considered a potential landing spot. Both New York teams have strong interest in Sasaki, although he could also choose an organization with pedigree and experience (the Chicago Cubs) or a team in an international city (the Toronto Blue Jays) whose previous success with Japanese players still remains (Darvish began his career with the Texas Rangers) or those whose reputation for getting the best out of players might appeal (the Tampa Bay Rays). Many other franchises can – and will – make strong appeals to Sasaki once he is in office.

Unlike traditional free agency, Sasaki comes with a financial cap, making him a bargain for all 30 teams. There’s no doubting Sasaki’s talent, even though his average fastball velocity has dropped two ticks this season to just over 97 mph. Sasaki showed plenty of ability to push his hitting rate to triple digits when needed, and he could soon become the toughest starter in the MLB. His best pitch is still the splitter, whose movement profile makes him unique, even in an MLB where the split has come back into fashion in recent seasons.

Durability is the biggest question for Sasaki. His career high in innings is 129⅓, set in 2022. He made 18 starts this year after a torn oblique and soreness in his right arm forced him to miss about a quarter of his appearances.

Sasaki’s recruitment comes amid a free-agent period that is expected to move faster than in recent years, adding to an offseason in which Sasaki would be among the most coveted players alongside free-agent outfielder Juan Soto and right-hander Corbin Burnes more intrigue available – at a fraction of the price.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.