Roki Sasaki Signs With Dodgers Over Padres, Blue Jays in Monumental Signing for LA

The Los Angeles Dodgers have won again.

On Friday, Japanese phenom pitcher Roki Sasaki officially announced that he’s signing with the Dodgers in a monumental free agent signing for the organization.

“I have signed a minor contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers,” Sasaki announced on Instagram.

“It was a very difficult decision, but I will do my best to make it the right decision when I look back after my baseball career.”

Sasaki chose the Dodgers over the San Diego Padres and Toronto Blue Jays, who were the reported finalists alongside L.A.

Sasaki, a 23-year-old pitcher who’s coming over from Nippon Professional Baseball, is widely considered one of the best pitching prospects in the world.

Read more: Roki Sasaki Scouting Report — Full Breakdown of Dodgers Free Agent Target

Across four seasons in the NPB, the right-hander went 29-15 with a 2.10 ERA. He also had an impressive 505 strikeouts to just 88 walks across 394.2 innings pitched.

Sasaki decided to make the move to Major League Baseball this offseason, despite the fact that he would be considered an amateur international free agent and thus be ineligible for a major league contract.

By coming to MLB before he turned 25 years old and with less than six years of service time under his belt, Sasaki was only eligible to sign with a team on a minor league contract with international bonus pool money as a signing bonus.

However, money clearly wasn’t important to Sasaki, as he wanted to live out his lifelong dream of playing in Major League Baseball.

“There are no absolutes in baseball, and in Roki’s eyes, there are no absolutes in life,” his agent Joel Wolfe said at the Winter Meetings. “It’s always been his dream to come to the major leagues since he was in high school.”

He’ll now be accomplishing that dream with the Dodgers.

For the Dodgers, this is an extremely rewarding moment for an organization that poured a ton of time and effort into Sasaki.

The Dodgers have traveled to Japan numerous times to watch him pitch, and likely spent countless hours coming up with the best possible presentation to make to the 23-year-old pitcher.

Sasaki took first meetings with at least eight known clubs, and then had second meetings with only three known clubs in the Dodgers, Padres, and Blue Jays.

While Sasaki’s first round of meetings were on his terms — taking place in the Wasserman offices and without any players from an interested team — the second round of meetings were on the teams’ terms, and it was up to the Dodgers to prove to Sasaki that they were the best organization for him.

Clearly, they did just that.

With Sasaki joining the Dodgers, they will now have a rotation featuring three of the best Japanese players in the world in Sasaki, Shohei Ohtani, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Moreover, with Tyler Glasnow expected to be back and the addition of two-time Cy Young award winner Blake Snell, the Dodgers could have one of the best rotations in MLB history.

Sasaki, of course, is only 23 years old, and knows that he’s far from a finished product. That’s why he was very interested in picking a team with a great track record for developing pitchers.

“We’ve had numerous conversations about team location, market size, team success – things like that,” his agent Joel Wolfe told reporters a few weeks ago. “He doesn’t seem to look at it in the typical way that other players do. He has a more long-term, global view of things.

“I believe Roki is also very interested in the pitching development and how a team is going to help him get better both in the near future and over the course of his career.”

Sasaki, despite having the potential to be one of the greatest pitchers ever, knows he has a lot of work to do to get there.

“Roki is by no means a finished product. He knows it and the teams know it,” Wolfe addd. “But he is a guy that wants to be great. He’s not coming here to be rich or to get a huge contract. He wants to be great. He wants to be one of the greatest ever. I see that now and he has articulated it.”

Sasaki will be doing that with the Dodgers, as L.A. landed their “big fish” for the second consecutive offseason.

Last year, the Dodgers lured Ohtani and Yamamoto to Los Angeles with both their excellent presentations and their willingness to open the checkbook.

This year, on an even playing field with the other 29 teams without the ability to use their financial willpower, the Dodgers, yet again, secured the prize of the free agent class.

“I think the passion for the game of baseball there is as strong or stronger (in Japan) than any other country in the world,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said ahead of the 2024 season.

“And so in an ideal world, in the next five to 10 years, we’re going to have kids growing up as Dodger fans.”

The addition of Sasaki has officially solidified just that.

Photo Credit: Sam Navarro-USA TODAY Sports