Dodgers Plan for Roki Sasaki in 2025 Revealed by Andrew Friedman
Roki Sasaki signed a minor league with the Los Angeles Dodgers Wednesday and was introduced as the newest member of the team at Dodger Stadium.
However, he won’t be starting his career in the minors at all.
Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman confirmed that Sasaki will begin the season as part of the Dodgers’ starting rotation when they open in Tokyo this March against the Chicago Cubs, with plans to build from there.
More news: Roki Sasaki Reveals Why He Chose Dodgers in Free Agency
“He’s gonna go and start the season and we will continue to work with him in between starts,” Friedman said. “There’s more travel here. But we don’t have any official number of innings or anything that we’re going to pre-determine. It’s going to be much more about partnering with him, getting that feedback, seeing how he bounces back between starts, and obviously as we get into the season, we’ll know a lot more than we do today.”
The Dodgers are set to use a six-man rotation, a setup that should feel familiar to Sasaki, as well as Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shohei Ohtani.
Managing this roster setup will be smoother once Ohtani returns to the rotation since he won’t count toward the 13-pitcher roster limit. On top of that, if Sasaki logs a full season of service time and takes home Rookie of the Year honors, the Dodgers would secure a draft pick.
The key to Sasaki’s success during his rookie season will be staying healthy. The Dodgers were decimated with injuries last year and conducted a self audit but probably won’t publish anything about it, according to Friedman.
“We had a lot of different conversations about it, we’re going to continue to,” Friedman said. “I don’t know that we’re going to publish anything. But we feel better today than we did six months ago, and we’ll all be really disappointed if we don’t feel way better about it six months from now. Obviously the most important thing is results in our business, and we understand that.”
Sasaki will earn $760,000 in his first season with the Dodgers after being classified as an international amateur. Over four seasons in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, he posted a 2.02 ERA.
More news: MLB Conducted Thorough Investigation of Roki Sasaki Process Before He Signed With Dodgers
Photo Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images
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