This year’s free-agent pool potentially just got a lot more intriguing.
The Chiba Lotte Marines of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league announced that they have begun the process of posting star pitcher Roki Sasaki to MLB.
Unlike when Yoshinobu Yamamoto signed a record-breaking 12-year, $325 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers last off-season, Sasaki is considered an international amateur free agent and would be subject to MLB’s international amateur signing bonus pools, so he won’t be able to sign for more than any team’s existing pool.
Each assigned bonus pool fell between $4,652,200 to $7,114,800 for the period of Jan. 15 through Dec. 15 this year.
The official date of Sasaki’s posting will determine whether he falls into the 2024 or 2025 international amateur free agent class.
It seemed unlikely that the Marines would post Sasaki, due to the agreement between MLB and NPB that pays the posting club a percentage of the total value of the contract. Sasaki wouldn’t have become eligible for a move to MLB until the end of the 2026 season.
So, by posting him now, Chiba Lotte is potentially losing out on millions of dollars as Sasaki can not earn more than a team’s allotted pool.
All 30 teams will have 45 days to negotiate a contract with Sasaki once he is officially posted.
A six-foot-two right-hander with a fastball that touches 100 m.p.h. and a devastating splitter, Sasaki posted a 2.35 ERA over 111.0 innings with the Marines in 2024. He also struck out 129 hitters while walking just 32.
His innings were limited due to a torn oblique and right arm soreness.
Sasaki rose to prominence as one of the best young pitchers in baseball in 2022, throwing a 19-strikeout perfect game before pitching for the World Baseball Classic-winning Japanese squad the following spring.
Over four seasons with Chiba Lotte, he owns a 2.02 ERA with 524 strikeouts in 414.2 innings.
