Happy Rocky Sasaki Week!
After announcing his intention to come to the MLB at the start of the 2024-25 season, the 23-year-old Japanese free agent immediately became the most sought-after pitcher this winter thanks to his combination of talent, age and skill standards. a contract.
With the 2025 international free agent signing period opening on January 15 and Sasaki’s posting window closing on January 23, we can see where Sasaki is headed on Wednesday.
Since Sasaki decided to come to the majors before his 25th birthday, he was limited to a minor league deal with a signing bonus coming from the team’s international bonus pool (maximum of just over $7.5 million). This makes the budding star a rare free agent that every team can afford to sign.
While we wait for Sasaki’s destination to come into focus, we asked our MLB experts what makes him so good, which major league players he reminds us of, and which teams seem most likely to land him.
Monday update: Sasaki plans to sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres or Toronto Blue Jays sometime within the next week or so, sources told ESPN, with a cadre of big-name teams informing in recent days that they are not much longer. In mind.
What makes Sasaki a desirable free agent?
Bradford Doolittle: He’s young, accomplished, and has measurable tools that could make him the best player in baseball right now. But he’s not a “maybe he’ll be ‘X’ if he hits the max” prospect but a player who has already had success in a high-level league and can slide into a big league rotation. The limited workload threshold, right now, is the only thing really holding back Sasaki’s prospects for 2025. With his full collection of team-dominant seasons intact, there’s no risk in signing him. As good as he is now, he has room to grow in terms of his arsenal and how to fill it out physically. You don’t get a set of factors that all line up like this, not least Sasaki was so keen to make this leap that he was willing to make maximum profits a secondary factor.
Buster Olney: As we’ve seen with Yoshinobu Yamamoto and with Juan Soto – and as we’ve seen all the way back to Alex Rodriguez – excelling at a young age is everything. Sasaki is already expected to be a top talent at 23 years old, and the team that lands him will have years of control while paying him a relative wage.
Kelly McDaniel: In describing his client’s potential nine-figure deal to me this winter, one agent emphasized why he was confident it would happen, even if he had a bad year, by saying: “Age is the breakout.” Rosters are getting younger, so teams have more money to spend, but they don’t want to offer long-term deals to older players, so they (generally) look for short-term free agent deals or trades for players who are a year or two old. out of control. This means that long-term deals are generally only acceptable to a wide range of teams when they can sign a top young star who is still in his peak years. (Like the Red Sox are pursuing Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Juan Soto, and extend Rafael Devers, but aren’t offering big money for any older players). Sasaki could be under team control for the entirety of his career as a professional player, at a price every team can afford: a true unicorn that gives a chance to all 30 teams.
David Schoenfeld: He is entering his age 23 season and it is no exaggeration to say that he has the potential to be the best player in baseball. In four years in Japan, he had a 2.02 ERA, averaging 11.4 strikeouts per nine. He hit 102 mph and is 6-foot-3 and athletic. You could argue he’s at the top of the Stephen Strasburg/Bullskins ladder as a prospect, but he’s already dominated as a pro.
What current or former MLB pitcher on the mound reminds you of him?
Schoenfeld: By the strong fastball/breakthrough combination, I think of two former MLB greats: Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling. There are certainly some similarities to Shohei Ohtani as well, though Ohtani slowly reduced his use of the spacer and didn’t use it much in 2022-23, often going to his sweeper. In Japan in 2024, Sasaki generated a 57% whiff rate on his bullpen, which would have ranked second in MLB behind Reds (now Yankees) reliever Fernando Cruz.
Doolittle: I don’t know that there is any single man. The break kind of reminds me of the one Logan Gilbert throws, one with a very low spin rate, and it’s weird to watch in slow motion. The easy, heavy and hard stuff he offers kind of reminds me of Kevin Brown, but with a different fastball. The most interesting thing about Sasaki is that it’s hard to call him the next so-and-so. It’s its own thing, and novelty is a great and very rare thing in sports these days.
McDaniel: There is no perfect combination, and Sasaki is still changing as a pitcher, so I will point out some players with similar qualities. Hunter Greene had a similar combination of arm speed and buzz at the same age, along with some questions about fastball form and breaking ball quality. Sasaki’s elite player clearly has a number of advantages over previous NPB pitchers, but there are only a few US-born players, such as Clemens and Schilling. The overall package (strong fastball, slider, and unsplit pitch) is similar to that of Paul Skenes, although Sasaki’s command and fourth- and fifth-place pitching are areas he will need to address to have a chance to really stand up to Skenes. Debut in MLB.
Buster Olney: He reminds me of Leo Darvish, with his strong build and athleticism. It appears he will have the ability to make adjustments as needed. Darvish is known for his ability to copy other shooters’ passes, and watching Sasaki move, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had the same talent.
Are there any concerns about how his game will translate from Japan to MLB?
McDaniel: Sasaki’s fastball form and velocity declined last season, his passing velocity has diminished even further, he will likely need to add a fourth and perhaps fifth pitch, and his execution inside the strike zone may be a little better. All of these are simple enough to address in the first half of 2025 as long as Sasaki chooses a strong development club, as I suspect he will. Some mechanical adjustments and mental signals can do a lot of the heavy lifting because these things can all be interconnected. I expect to see glimpses of Sasaki’s potential in 2025 as we wait until 2026 for the first series of five or six straight races to begin.
Olney: We really need our colleague Eduardo Perez to step in here, because he will be the one to tell us if Sasaki has any blatant statements like changing the pitch. That’s what Yamamoto experienced in his first months with the Dodgers. But Sasaki can have excellent things no matter what. His splitter seems to be so good that he wouldn’t be hit even if the hitter knew it was coming.
Doolittle: Well, the different ball means we don’t know exactly how the measurements will change on his pitches, but that’s not a huge concern. He looked great in the World Baseball Classic which provides a great preview of this mod. It’s really durability. He has never thrown many innings, his best pitch is a breakout and his bullpen was down last season. These would be more troubling if he got a contract similar to Yamamoto’s, which he didn’t. I’ve seen his splitter carry a grade of 80 and when you match that with a triple-digit moving fastball and a track record of extra commands, health is the only thing to worry about.
Schoenfeld: Same as every starter: health and durability. He led in 20 starts and 129 innings pitched in Japan, in 2022. His fastball velocity dipped slightly in 2024 as he missed time with a torn oblique and shoulder fatigue. He will also have to adapt to facing more power hitters than he faced in Japan.
Are the Dodgers the team to beat heading into their decision?
Doolittle: They always are.
McDaniel: It’s the most likely landing spot and has been looked at that way for a while, but don’t underestimate how little we really know about Sasaki’s process of getting rid of the club and eventually being selected. We have some potential clues and trends, but we don’t really know much at the moment.
Olney: Sure, because they seem to get every player they want, along with an endless amount of money. The Dodgers will be the team to beat for years on and off the field.
Schoenfeld: I will say no. I’m betting on Sasaki wanting to go his own way and sign with a team that doesn’t already have Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
What other teams do you think have the best chance of landing him?
McDaniel: The Padres, led by ultra-aggressive GM AJ Preller, are viewed as the second-most potential landing spot behind the Dodgers, and San Diego clearly needs Sasaki more: he would change the outlook for the entire franchise. Beyond that, we’re mostly guessing from the teams we know he’s met that seem to have a good environment for Sasaki to develop and compete in meaningful games: the Giants, Mariners, Mets, Yankees, Cubs, and Rangers seem to have featured the most but I can’t even say I’d say it’s a complete list of teams that take a long look.
Doolittle: For me, the Mets stand out. Sasaki and his acting were very vague when it came to offering glimpses into his thinking, which led to a lot of reading between the lines. It is very rare that a player of this caliber can choose any team he wants with money barely being part of the equation. So who knows? The Mets offer a good pitching environment, a strong potential for continued competition and an emerging pitching development program highlighted by the pitching lab they have built in Port St. Lucie. Why be another Dodger?
Olney: Sasaki is clearly not afraid to ignore conventional wisdom, in the same way Ohtani did when he arrived — he missed out on tens of millions of dollars by pushing to get to the majors now, rather than just waiting. With that in mind, I think the Padres would be the more interesting alternative for the Dodgers, due to the weather, Darvish’s presence, and the opportunity to play against the best in the same division.
Schoenfeld: If Sasaki is primarily concerned with his development as a pitcher, what better place than Seattle? Unlike the Dodgers, the Mariners have kept their young starters healthy. They’re also playing in a great pitchers’ park, they’re playing on the West Coast and it’s not like Seattle doesn’t have a chance to win. But we haven’t heard much about the Marines’ presence in the race.