Sasaki Snub Dodgers: Japanese Ace Set to Choose Different Path for a Shocking Reason

The biggest free agents in this edition of the offseason are off the board, what with Juan Soto signing a 10-year, $765 million contract with the New York Mets, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any potential game-changers left on the market. One such potential franchise-altering talent is Roki Sasaki, the 23-year-old Japanese phenom who, due to his age, won’t be able to command a huge contract the same way Yoshinobu Yamamoto did when he made the transition stateside.

This, of course, would open up the Sasaki sweepstakes to nearly the entire league, but even then, many insiders seem to project that Sasaki will be signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers, giving them yet another Japanese megastar alongside Shohei Ohtani and Yamamoto.

However, Jim Bowden of The Athletic seems to disagree with this notion, as he believes that Sasaki and his camp will prefer to play for a team where he could be one of its biggest stars instead of playing second or even third-fiddle on the Dodgers behind his Japanese brethren.

“I’m not in that camp because I think endorsement deals with Japanese companies are going to be important for him financially since he won’t be eligible for arbitration for three years or eligible for free agency for at least six years. In Los Angeles, he’d be in the shadow of both Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, lessening his endorsement ceiling,” Bowden wrote.

To that end, Bowden believes that Sasaki will land with either the San Diego Padres, where he could team up with Yu Darvish, or the New York Yankees, a team that Sasaki is assumed to have a soft spot for due to his admiration for Masahiro Tanaka. But the Dodgers have pulled rabbits out of their hat in the past, so one can never rule them out.

Roki Sasaki tantalizes MLB teams with his potential

It’s not too often that a pitcher like Roki Sasaki, who can be had under team control for six years, makes the transition to the big leagues. But this is what makes the prospect of signing him equally tough and tantalizing.

Sasaki, in 69 career games out in Japan (414.2 innings pitched), put up a sterling ERA of 2.02. This came as a result of his elite strikeout rate, as he sat down 11.4 batters per nine innings due to strikes. His stuff is something that has a good chance of translating to the big leagues, which is why teams such as the Dodgers, Mets, Yankees, and Padres are all over the 23-year-old.