Roki Sasaki Will Be Posted To MLB Soon, And The Timing Is Important

The Roki Sasaki sweepstakes are about to begin. According to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the 23-year-old fireballer from Japan will be posted for MLB teams during the Winter Meetings this week.

Sasaki is considered by many to be the best young pitcher on the planet. In four seasons pitching for the Chiba Lotte Marines, he has a 2.02 ERA with 524 strikeouts in 414 2/3 innings pitched. He averages 97 mph with his fastball and possesses elite secondary offerings in his splitter and slider.

We’ve known for weeks that Sasaki would pursue an MLB contract this winter, but the timing of his posting is important. The Winter Meetings, which take place in Dallas this year, will commence Monday and last through December 12. Typically, they are the busiest time of the offseason for trades and signings.

That will be a welcome change from an unusually slow offseason so far, but there’s no chance Sasaki will sign with his new team this week. Once he is officially posted to MLB by Chiba Lotte, he has a 45-day window to agree to terms with an MLB club. If he’s posted on December 9, that window would culminate on January 23.

MLB’s rules technically classify Sasaki as an international amateur free agent—even though he has pitched professionally in the second-most competitive league in the world for four years. That limits him to a rookie contract and prevents him from reaching free agency until he accrues six years of service time.

Being considered an international amateur also restricts his signing bonus to however much his new team has available in their international amateur bonus pool allotment—most likely in the $5-8 million range—in the 2025 signing class. To qualify for that signing bonus, he has to wait until the 2025 singing period begins on January 15. While he may agree to terms with a team before then, he can’t sign until on or after that date. That gives him a week and a half to sign before his posting window expires.

As The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal described, Sasaki’s posting will have disastrous consequences for the other members of the international amateur free agent class—predominantly teenagers from Latin America. All 30 teams have deals in place with their amateur free agents by now, even though this is technically against the rules. When Sasaki signs, his new club will have to break verbal agreements with those young ballplayers to divert their signing bonus pool money to him. That leaves the teenage players without professional opportunities or forces them to sign for significantly less money.

Sasaki could’ve waited two more years before requesting to be posted. Then, as a 25-year-old, he would no longer be considered an amateur and could sign as large of a contract as he can find. For example, Yoshinobu Yamamoto signed a 12-year, $325 million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers last winter.

The benefit for Sasaki coming to MLB sooner is that he will become a free agent by age 29. At that point, he can find a lucrative deal on the open market. This is the path Shohei Ohtani pursued. He signed with the Los Angeles Angels before the 2018 season for a signing bonus of just $2.3 million—a small fraction of his value. By becoming a free agent at 29, he landed a 10-year, $700 million deal with the Dodgers (not accounting for massive deferrals).

This route is riskier for Sasaki than it was for Ohtani. For one thing, Sasaki is purely a pitcher whereas Ohtani is a two-way player. He’s also less of a sure-thing on the mound. Despite his dominance, he has suffered injuries in each of the last three years, and has never thrown 130 innings in a season. He also lost two ticks of velocity this year, and his strikeout rate declined from 39.1% to 28.7%.

There is practically no risk at all for MLB teams to sign Sasaki because he will earn negligible money compared to a major-league payroll, and he has the chance to be an ace on a rookie contract. His courtship will become one of the major stories of the offseason, starting with his posting this week.