The latest on Roki Sasaki free agency: Team to beat and comparisons in MLB

Bradford Doolittle: He’s young, has accomplished a lot, and has measurable tools that could make him the top prospect in baseball right now. But he’s not a “maybe ‘X’ if he hits his ceiling” prospect, but rather one who has already had success in a high-level league and can be headed toward a major league rotation. A limited workload threshold, for now, is the only thing really holding back Sasaki’s 2025 projection. With his entire collection of team-control seasons intact, there’s no risk in signing him. And as good as he is now, he has room to grow in terms of his arsenal and how he develops physically. You just don’t get a combination of factors lining up like this, not the least of which is that Sasaki was so eager to make the leap that he was willing to make maximum earnings a secondary factor.
Buster Olney: As we have seen with Yoshinobu Yamamoto and with Juan Soto — and as we have witnessed since Alex Rodríguez — excellence at a young age is everything. Sasaki is expected to be a high-level talent at 23 years old, and the team that signs him will have years of control while paying him relatively pennies.
Kiley McDaniel: When describing to me the potential nine-figure deal his client offered me this winter, one agent underscored why he was confident it would happen even if he had a bad year, saying, “age is a deal breaker.” Rosters are getting younger, so teams have more money to spend, but they don’t want to offer long-term deals to older players, so they (generally) look for short-term free agent deals or trades for players with one or two years of control. That means long-term deals are generally acceptable to a wide swath of teams only when they can land a standout young star still in his prime (like the Boston Red Sox who pursued Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Juan Soto, extending the contract of Rafael Devers, but without offering a large amount of money to any older player). Sasaki could be under team control throughout his prime as a bona fide ace, at a price every team can afford: a true unicorn opportunity for all 30 teams.
David Schoenfield: He’s entering his age-23 season and it’s no exaggeration to say he has the potential to be the best starter in baseball. In four years in Japan, he has a 2.02 ERA, averaging 11.4 strikeouts per nine innings. He has reached 102 mph and is 6-foot-3 and athletic. One could argue that it is on par with the scale of Stephen Strasburg/Paul Skenes as a pitching prospect, except he’s already dominated as a pro.
Schoenfield: With his powerful combination of fastball and splitter, I think of two great former MLB players: Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling. There are certainly some similarities to Shohei Ohtani as well, although Ohtani slowly reduced the use of his splitter and didn’t use it much in 2022-23, relying more on his sweeper. In Japan in 2024, Sasaki induced a 57% strikeout rate with his splitter, which would have ranked second in the MLB behind Cincinnati Reds (now New York Yankees) reliever Fernando Cruz.
Doolittle: I don’t know if there is only one type. The splitter reminds me of the one Logan Gilbert throws, one with such a low spin rate that it’s a little scary to watch in slow motion. The easy, heavy, hard casting it offers reminds me of Kevin Brownjust with a different fastball. The most exciting thing about Sasaki is that it’s hard to call him the next so-and-so. It’s its own personality, and novelty is a great thing and all too rare in sports these days.
McDaniel: There’s no perfect comparison, and Sasaki is still changing as a pitcher, so I’ll point out some players with similar qualities. Hunter Greene had a similar combination of arm speed and popularity at the same age, along with some questions about the shape of his fastball and the quality of his breaking ball. Obviously, Sasaki’s standout splitter draws several comparisons to former NPB pitchers, but only to a handful of American-born players, such as Clemens and Schilling. The total package (power fastball, slider and slow splitter pitch) is similar to that of Paul Skenes, although Sasaki’s control and fourth and fifth pitches are areas he will need to address to have a chance to truly live up to Sasaki’s debut. Skenes in the MLB.
Olney: He reminds me of Yu Darvish, with his build and athleticism. It sounds like you will have the ability to make adjustments as needed. Darvish is known for his ability to mimic other pitchers’ pitches, and seeing how Sasaki moves, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had the same gift.
Is there any concern about how your game will translate from Japan to MLB?
McDaniel: Sasaki’s fastball shape and velocity regressed last season, his slider velocity also dropped further, he’ll likely need to add a fourth and perhaps a fifth pitch, and his delivery inside the strike zone could be a little better. These are all simple enough on their own to be addressed in the first half of 2025, provided Sasaki picks a strong pitching development club, as I suspect he will. Some mechanical adjustments and mental cues could do a lot of the heavy lifting, since all of these things can be related. I would expect to see flashes of Sasaki’s potential in 2025 as we wait until 2026 for the first dominant string of five or six starts in a row.
Olney: We really need our colleague Eduardo Pérez to intervene here, because he would be the one to tell us if Sasaki has any obvious signs, such as if he takes his attention away from pitches. That’s what Yamamoto experienced in his first months with the Los Angeles Dodgers. But Sasaki might have such excellent material that it doesn’t matter. His splitter appears to be so good that it won’t connect even if the batter knows it’s coming.
Doolittle: Well, the different ball means we don’t know exactly how the measurements of his pitches will change, but that’s not a major concern. He looked great in the World Baseball Classic, which provides a good preview of that adjustment. It really is durability. He’s never thrown many innings, his best pitch is a splitter, and his velocity went down last season. These things would be much more concerning if he were receiving a contract like Yamamoto’s, but that’s not the case. I’ve seen his splitter rated at 80 and when you combine that with a moving triple-digit fastball and a track record of superior control, health is the only thing you have to worry about.
Schoenfield: The same as all openers: health and durability. In Japan in 2022, he has made 20 starts and 129 innings. His fastball velocity dropped a bit in 2024 as he missed time with an oblique tear and shoulder fatigue. He will also have to adjust to facing stronger hitters than he faced in Japan.
Are the Dodgers the team to beat as their decision nears?
Doolittle: They always are.
McDaniel: They are the team most likely to be picked and have been seen that way for a while, but let’s not underestimate how little we really know about Sasaki’s process of eliminating and ultimately choosing a club. We have some clues and possible leanings, but we don’t really know much at this point.
Olney: Sure, because they apparently get all the players they want, with a bottomless pit of money. The Dodgers will be the team to beat for years on and off the field.
Schoenfield: I will say no. I bet Sasaki will want to forge his own path and sign with a team that doesn’t already have Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
What other teams do you think have a better chance of signing him?
McDaniel: The Padres, led by their ultra-aggressive general manager AJ Preller, are perceived as the second most likely destination behind the Dodgers, and San Diego clearly needs Sasaki the most: he would change the outlook for the entire franchise. Beyond that, we’re mainly assuming that the teams we know he’s met with seem to have a good environment for Sasaki to develop and compete in big games: the Giants, Mariners, Mets, Yankees, Cubs and Rangers seem to be the ones. that are mentioned the most, but I can’t even say that that is a complete list of teams that are being considered in depth.
Doolittle: For me, the Mets stand out. Sasaki and his representative have been quite opaque in offering glimpses of their thinking, which has led to a lot of reading between the lines. It is very rare that a player of this caliber can choose the team he wants without money being barely part of the equation. So who knows? The Mets offer a good pitching environment, a strong chance for sustained containment and a budding pitching development program, highlighted by the pitching lab they built in Port Saint Lucie. Why be another Dodger?
Olney: It’s pretty evident that Sasaki isn’t afraid to ignore conventional wisdom, the same way Ohtani did when he arrived — he passed up many, many tens of millions of dollars by striving to get to the majors now, rather than simply waiting. . With that in mind, I think the Padres will be the most interesting alternative to the Dodgers, due to the weather, the presence of Darvish and the opportunity to play against the best, in the same division.
Schoenfield: If Sasaki is primarily concerned with his own development as a pitcher, is there a better place than Seattle? Unlike the Dodgers, the Mariners have kept their young starters healthy. They also play in a great pitcher’s park, they play on the West Coast and it’s not like Seattle doesn’t have a chance to win. But we haven’t heard much about the Mariners as a candidate.