NPB’s Chiba Lotte Marines deploy Roki Sasaki to MLB clubs

Roki Sasaki is close to making it to the MLB next season. His NPB team, the Chiba Lotte Marines, announced overnight (on X) that they intend to make the star right-hander available to major league clubs through the posting system. The Marines have not announced a specific date for when they will open the release window. ESPN’s Jeff Passan writes that it hasn’t been decided yet. Once Sasaki is officially signed, he has 45 days to generate interest and decide where he wants to sign.

The announcement kicks off one of the top storylines of the offseason. Sasaki, who turned 23 last week, is the best pitcher in Japan. He is one of the most talented pitchers in the world. It’s the second offseason in a row that MLB teams are battling for arguably the best pitcher in the NPB. Different than that Yoshinobu Yamamoto In a tender, Sasaki’s earning power is limited to a few million dollars.

MLB classifies players who retire from a foreign league before the age of 25 as amateurs. These players can only sign a minor league contract and are subject to a fixed bonus limit. Whichever team signs Sasaki will be allowed to add him to the MLB roster by Opening Day – he won’t start the season in Triple-A, although his first contract will be a minor league deal – but he won’t be allowed to do so be able to sign for more than a few million dollars.

Once signed, Sasaki will be subject to the same six-year control window that applies to all players drafted from the farm system. He will play the next three seasons at roughly the league minimum salary before having to undergo arbitration three times after that. Sasaki would not return to the open market until the 2030-31 offseason. He would be eligible to sign an extension during his team control window, but MLB has the ability to block a contract because it considers a circumvention of bonus pool limits. There are no set criteria for what might prompt MLB to intervene, but it’s safe to say that Sasaki won’t be signing a massive contract extension within weeks of agreeing to a modest contract bonus.

Yamamoto waited until his 25th birthday to avoid the bonus pool limit. That gave him the freedom to sign with the Dodgers for $325 million, the highest guarantee for a pitcher in history. Sasaki didn’t want to go that route. Instead, he made it a priority to make the transition to the MLB as quickly as possible, even though it required the involvement of the Marines.

NPB players are not eligible for international free agency until they have accumulated nine years of service. Sasaki pitched at Japan’s highest level for four years. Last offseason, he unsuccessfully pushed for the Marines to sign him to MLB teams. This time his wish is granted. There was speculation that Sasaki’s contract might contain a clause to force the team to play.

Whether out of contractual obligation or simply to accommodate the player’s wishes, the Marines will lose their ace for essentially nothing. The posting agreement between MLB and Nippon Professional Baseball ties the NPB team’s compensation to the value of the free agent contract. An MLB team that signs a drafted player pays a fee to the Japanese team in addition to the amount going to the player. The fee is a fixed amount calculated as 20% of the first $25 million of a deal, 17.5% of the next $25 million and 15% of subsequent expenses.

Yamamoto’s $325 million deal was a windfall for his former team, the Orix Buffaloes. The Dodgers paid the Buffaloes $50.625 million to release him from his contract. The Marines will get a fraction of that. If Sasaki signs for $10 million — and there’s a good chance his bonus is less than that — the team would receive a $2 million booking fee.

The Marines’ loss will be a win for an MLB team. The experts assume that Sasaki is a top starter. The 6-foot-1 right-hander can reach triple digits with his fastball and has a potentially deadly splitter. He lost some life last season, although the rating is still in the upper 90s. Marquee’s Lance Brozdowski reports (YouTube link) that Sasaki averaged 97.1 mph with his fastball this year, up from 99 mph in 1923. That’s well above average for an MLB starter, even if the trend is in the wrong direction.

While fastball speed catches the eye, evaluators suggest his splitter in the low 90s is his best pitch. He uses a slider as his top breaking ball, and while it doesn’t perform as well as the fastball-splitter combination, it is considered a potentially above-average offering. Kyle Glaser, writing for Baseball America in 2023, predicted that Sasaki would be an ace deserving of the first overall pick if he were in the domestic amateur draft. Glaser ranked Sasaki as the most talented non-MLB player at the ’23 World Baseball Classic, one spot ahead of Yamamoto. Sasaki struck out 11 batters over 7 2/3 innings for four runs for the Japanese championship team in that tournament.

The 6’2″ hurler has posted dominant numbers in NPB on a ratings basis. He has a 2.10 earned run average in nearly 400 innings at Japan’s highest level. This year’s ERA of 2.35 was the highest of his four seasons. In a comparatively weak year, Sasaki struck out nearly 29% of batters while his walk percentage was a manageable 7.1%.

To the extent there is a knock against Sasaki, it is his workload. He never reached 130 innings in a season. He was limited to 111 frames this year, missing time midway through the season with an unspecified throwing arm injury. Combined with his slight drop in velocity, that’s concerning, but it’s unlikely to deter teams from extensive recruiting. The benefit of getting a potential top player far outweighs the minimal cost of a signing team.

More will follow.