When Japanese stud righthander Roki Sasaki was a child, he dreamed of playing in the major leagues. The MLB stadiums, the crowds cheering in English, the jersey emblazoned with—well, he never got that far.
“I asked him if he wanted to talk about the teams,” says his agent, Joel Wolfe. “All he wanted to talk about was: 'Am I going to be posted? When am I going to be posted?'”
After much hemming and hawing, the Chiba Lotte Marines, the Nippon Professional Baseball team that took Sasaki first overall in the 2019 draft, announced late last month that they would post Sasaki this winter, allowing him to sign with a major league team. Which major league team that might be is anyone’s guess—including Wolfe’s.
“What is important to Roki in making this decision?” Wolfe asked rhetorically. “It’s been a little bit difficult to really ascertain what his decision-making process would be for choosing a team, because his focus has predominantly been on whether or not he's going to be able to post. … The best I can say is he has paid attention to how teams have done, as far as overall success, both this year and in years past.” Wolfe added that Sasaki has asked current and former major leaguers about weather, pitching development programs and general comfort for a Japanese player. But Wolfe said his client just wants to play in the majors and does not yet have any one team in mind.
Sasaki, who must sign by Jan. 23 or return to Chiba Lotte, will be the pitching prize of the winter. At only 23, and with perhaps the best stuff of anyone in the world, he would be coveted by all 30 teams under normal circumstances. These are not normal circumstances. If Sasaki had waited until he was 25, he could have signed a massive free-agent contract, perhaps even one approaching the 12-year, $325 million deal his countryman and fellow pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto inked with the Los Angeles Dodgers a year ago. But at Sasaki’s insistence, he is arriving now, as a player who is eligible only to sign a minor-league contract, limited by teams’ international bonus-pool money.
Those figures range from $5.1 million to $7.6 million—a gap Wolfe called “negligible” and said would not be a deciding factor. So essentially this is, as Wolfe put it, “the draft in reverse.” All 30 teams want and can afford Sasaki. He gets to choose.
The last player who faced a similar situation was Japanese two-way star Shohei Ohtani, whose Nippon Ham Fighters posted him before the 2018 season when he, too, was 23. After reviewing presentations from most of the league, Ohtani selected the Los Angeles Angels.
That was seen as a surprising choice at the time—the Angels are not a marquee franchise and had not won a playoff game since 2009, and indeed Ohtani decamped for the Dodgers when he became a free agent a year ago. But Wolfe indicated that Sasaki might be open to a similar underdog.
As Sasaki made clear to the team that he wished to be posted—a desire some people saw as disrespectful to the Marines—some fans and pundits criticized him. “I think it’s been a bit unfair, and it’s affected him mentally a little bit,” Wolfe said. He added that “there’s an argument to be made that a small- or mid-market team might be more beneficial for him as a soft landing coming from Japan, given what he’s been through.” (Wolfe is no dummy; he also added that he thought Sasaki could handle a major market such as New York or Los Angeles.)
Sasaki has endured much more than negative media coverage. He grew up in Rikuzentakata, some 300 miles north of Tokyo, and he was nine when the Great East Japan Earthquake devastated the region in 2011. The resulting tsunami destroyed his home and killed his father and two of his grandparents. Sasaki has said he found comfort in throwing himself into baseball. On the 12th anniversary of the disaster, Sasaki made his World Baseball Classic debut and led Japan to a 10–2 victory.
It was during that tournament that the rest of the world learned about his fastball, which baffled major league hitters. His decision to leave Japan now may cost him nine figures. (It will cost the Marines tens of millions as well: They are eligible to receive only 25% of the signing bonus.) Why come now—or last year, as he initially hoped to—instead of waiting?
“There are no absolutes in baseball, and through Roki Sasaki’s eyes, there are no absolutes in life,” said Wolfe. For the first time in his life, Sasaki will control his own future. Now he just has to decide what that will entail.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Roki Sasaki Nears Lifelong MLB Dream As Free Agency Sweepstakes Begin.
