With Juan Soto agreeing to a historic contract with the New York Mets, the top MLB free agent is off the board. However, Soto’s subtraction from free agency is, somewhat, offset by the addition of a potential ace. Japanese pitcher Roki Sasaki was posted to MLB teams on Monday and will be eligible to sign with teams starting on Tuesday through January 23.
He is being posted by the Chiba Lotte Marines of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). The posting system is the same route that Shohei Ohtani took to join MLB from NPB back in 2017. It’s also the same route that pitchers Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Kodai Senga, and Shota Imanaga have gone through over the last two years, with all of them having immediate success on the mound in the United States.
Sasaki expressed his gratitude to the Marines for his posting while also implying that certain things within the organization held him back from reaching his full potential.
“There were many things that did not go well during my five years with the Marines, but I was able to get to this point by concentrating only on baseball, with the support of my teammates, staff, front office, and fans. I will do my best to work my way up from my minor contract to become the best player in the world, so that I will have no regrets in my one and only baseball career and live up to the expectations of everyone who has supported me.”
While the likes of Yamamoto, Senga, and Imanaga are part of this recent wave of Japanese imports, Sasaki is considered to be in another class compared to those three pitchers, who had an average age of 28 when they joined MLB. Sasaki just turned 23 last month, making him three-and-a-half years younger than the reigning AL Rookie of the Year winner in Luis Gil. Sasaki’s resume is also quite lengthy considering his youth, and it’s highlighted by him throwing a perfect game in April 2022, a game, by some advanced metrics, that could be the greatest pitching performance in baseball history, regardless of league.
On April 10, 2022, Sasaki authored the 16th and most recent perfect game in NPB history as he tied a league record with 19 strikeouts, and he did it at just 20 years old.
He also set a new all-time record with 13 consecutive strikeouts and achieved a game score of 106. Game score is a metric developed by legendary statistician, Bill James, that awards points for outs recorded, innings completed, and strikeouts, while subtracting points for walks, hits, and runs allowed. With Sasaki having the most strikeouts in a perfect game—in either NPB or MLB history—his score surpassed Kerry Wood’s 20-strikeout, one-hitter as the highest game score ever recorded.
During his four years in NPB, Sasaki posted a microscopic 2.02 ERA, a sub-1.00 WHIP, and averaged more than one strikeout per inning. His fastball has been clocked as high as 102.5 mph, and lots of MLB personnel have seen his pitching repertoire up close and personnel. Sasaki was part of the 2023 World Baseball Classic that was partly hosted by the United States and helped Japan win the gold medal alongside teammates Ohtani, Yamamoto, and Imanaga.
With those first two names already on the Los Angeles Dodgers, there’s been a natural link to Sasaki reuniting with them. The Dodgers already inked two-time Cy Young winner, Blake Snell, to a free agent deal, joining a rotation that in 2025 will have the two aforementioned Japanese stars, as well as Tyler Glasnow and Clayton Kershaw, amongst others. However, as an international amateur free agent, Sasaki isn’t eligible for one of those nine figure contracts that many have landed, so his much smaller starting salary gives more small-market teams the opportunity to land him.
Per MLB.com, Sasaki was the No. 3 overall free agent for 2025 when free agency first opened, trailing only No. 1 Soto and No. 2 Corbin Burnes. While he will be highly coveted, there’s no guarantee that an MLB club will reach a contract agreement with Sasaki during the 45-day window in which the posting system allows. If there is no agreement, then he would return to Chiba Lotte for the 2025 season and won’t be eligible for posting again until the following offseason.
Sasaki isn’t the only big name who’s dominated in the Far East and expected to land in Major League Baseball in 2025, as Hyeseong Kim has also been posted. The South Korean has applied his craft in the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) over the last eight years. He’s the only player in KBO history to win Gold Glove awards at both second base and shortstop, led the KBO in stolen bases in 2021, hit over .300 in each of the last four seasons, and is coming off career-highs in both home runs (11) and RBI (75).
