The Yankees’ acquisition of $750,000 worth of 2024 international bonus pool space at the trade deadline got my gears turning around the seemingly looming Roki Sasaki posting. There has been considerable reporting (such as this Chelsea Janes Washington Post jawn) to suggest that teams expect, or at least are planning for, Sasaki to be posted this offseason, and my sources tend to agree (though not universally). In this piece, I’m going to talk about how Sasaki looks (spoiler: not his best), how his posting will be different than that of most other Japanese players if he indeed comes over this offseason or next, the way teams have been behaving and preparing for his potential posting, and what shenanigans they might get up to as they continue to do so.
For those unfamiliar…
Sasaki has been the LeBron James of Japanese baseball since his junior year, a known generational high school talent who has gone on to deliver on and perhaps exceed expectations at the highest level of Japanese baseball. Sasaki turns 23 in November and his feats of strength are already legendary. He touched 101 in high school and once threw nearly 500 pitches in an eight-day span, including a 12-inning, 194-pitch complete game during which he also hit the game-winning two-run homer. He was the first pick in the 2019 NPB Draft by the Chiba Lotte Marines, had a sub-2.00 ERA in his 2021 rookie season, and then transcended the sport in 2022 when he threw 17 consecutive perfect innings that April.
The 6-foot-2 righty retired 52 consecutive batters (the MLB record is Yusmeiro Petit’s 47) during that stretch. His fastball averaged just shy of 99 mph in 2023 and he touched 103, making him the hardest-throwing pitcher in NPB history. He has one of the planet’s nastier splitters, and his slider quality also leapt in 2022. Sasaki was having an even better 2023 — 85 IP, 39% K%, 5% BB%, 62% GB%, 1.88 ERA, 0.92 FIP — before he was shut down with an oblique tear in July, which cost him most of the rest of the season and was a harbinger of things to come in 2024.
Sasaki’s Stuff Is Down
Roki made three appearances at the very end of the 2023 season coming off the oblique injury and his stuff was crisp as usual. That has not been the case in 2024, as he missed just about two months with an unspecified right arm injury and has shown suppressed stuff when he’s pitched. He made his first start off the IL on August 1, and though his velocity had rebounded somewhat, he isn’t currently in peak form. Here are some pitch and performance splits from 2023 and 2024. I pulled some of these from Synergy and some from DeltaGraphs:
2023 Roki Sasaki Pitch Splits
| Pitch Type | Usage% | Avg Velocity | Miss% | Chase% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fastball | 50% | 98.8 | 24% | 29% |
| Splitter | 35% | 89.6 | 53% | 48% |
| Slider | 14% | 87.6 | 45% | 33% |
2024 Roki Sasaki Pitch Splits
| Pitch Type | Usage% | Avg Velocity | Miss% | Chase% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fastball | 48% | 96.7 | 12%(!) | 25% |
| Splitter | 29% | 88.6 | 51% | 35% |
| Slider | 22% | 84.2 | 37% | 23% |
These are still good numbers, but the drop in Sasaki’s fastball and breaking ball velo, as well as the decline in his fastball’s miss rate and the dip in the chase rate against his secondary stuff, is all relatively concerning given his injuries. The injuries have also limited his ability to demonstrate he can sustain a starter’s workload, with his 20 starts and 129.1 IP in 2022 by far his single-season career high. Below, I’ve put his 2024 performance within the context of both NPB and MLB:
Roki Sasaki Relative to 2024 League Average
| Category | Roki 2023 | Roki 2024 | NPB Avg | MLB Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FB Velo | 98.8 | 96.7 | 91.1 | 94.4 |
| K% | 39.1% | 28.3% | 18.5% | 22.3% |
| BB% | 4.9% | 7.4% | 7.2% | 8.2% |
| GB% | 61.3% | 47.1% | 45.7% | 42.4% |
| FIP | 0.92 | 2.47 | 3.22 | 4.10 |
| SwStr% | 19.3% | 12.9% | 9.7% | 10.9% |
| O-Swing% | 38.1% | 29.9% | 31.0% | 28.3% |
| Z-Contact% | 77.5% | 89.2% | 87.8% | 85.3% |
The potential of a fully operational Sasaki is astronomical — at peak, he is in Paul Skenes territory, better in terms of pure stuff but not in terms of command. Even if there are some initial struggles or he suffers a severe injury early during his MLB tenure and requires surgery, at some point while Sasaki is in the majors he will probably be one of the nastiest handful of pitchers in the league. His 2024 struggles and injury history are notable, but none of this recent dip will impact the money Sasaki gets from an MLB team this offseason (if indeed he chooses to come over) because…
If Sasaki Is Posted This Offseason, He Won’t Make Much Money
Sasaki doesn’t yet meet the age or pro experience requirements to be exempt from international bonus pool restrictions. To be deemed a “Foreign Professional” and sign a contract like the 12-year, $325 million deal that Yoshinobu Yamamoto inked last offseason, a player must be at least 25 years of age and have played in a professional foreign league recognized by Major League Baseball for a minimum of six seasons. Sasaki will meet the age requirement in November of 2025, but because of the pandemic (which washed out his would-be 2020 debut), he won’t meet the six-season requirement until after 2026. His contractual earning power two years from now, when he would be paid more like a true free agent, is much, much greater than it would be this offseason, when it looks like Sasaki’s bonus will be capped around $6 million by baseball’s amateur bonus pool restrictions. And his bonus could well end up being less than that because most teams have already spent or committed much of their 2024 and 2025 bonus pools.
The only other NPB star who has come to MLB early and been subject to the current system of bonus pool restrictions rather than the posting system alone is Shohei Ohtani, who signed for $2.3 million in 2017. That was right after the amateur signing rules had changed — a 19-year-old Luis Robert Jr. signed for $26 million (with the White Sox paying a dollar-for-dollar tax to MLB) earlier that calendar year.
If you’re unfamiliar with the history of MLB’s bonus rules for international amateur players, you should read this glossary entry, which provides an overview and timeline. In short, under the current rules, MLB teams start each signing period with between $4.75 million and $7 million of bonus pool space, tailored within that range depending on many factors like whether a team has signed qualified free agents or exceeded luxury tax thresholds.
Who Has the Most 2024 Bonus Space Left?
This is the thread I’ve been pulling at since the trade deadline: Which teams have the most bonus pool space remaining for the 2024 signing period (which ends December 15), and which have the most unspoken for in the 2025 period that begins January 15? We’re in the middle of the 2024 period right now. Most of the big-money international amateurs signed in January and began their pro careers in the minors this season. Teams know how much money other clubs have left in the current signing period, and provided me with consistent and exact figures as I worked on this. I could give you the remaining pool amounts for all 30 teams down to the dollar (some have less than $20,000 left, as they’ve spent all they can), but it makes more sense to show you the top handful of teams at the moment:
- Los Angeles Dodgers – $2.5 million
- Baltimore Orioles – $2.15 million
- New York Yankees – $1.5 million
- San Francisco Giants – just shy of $1.5 million
- Boston Red Sox – $1 million
- Detroit Tigers – just shy of $1 million
- Chicago White Sox – just shy of $1 million
Pool amounts could still change and my sources expect they will. Teams can trade for up to 60% of their original pool space, but since the trade deadline has now passed, they can only do so with players who are not on their 40-man roster. After the 2023 trade deadline, the Dodgers traded multiple minor leaguers to acquire a bunch of pool space in order to sign Korean righty Hyun-Seok Jang (who is nasty, by the way), so there’s precedent for this. If Sasaki is posted early enough in the offseason to sign prior to December 15 (when the 2024 signing period ends), then I’m told there might be a mad dash to trade for pool space with which to court Sasaki (also giving some teams an opportunity to acquire prospects in exchange for their unspent space). Or perhaps the order of operations will instead be that teams will offer their maximum acquirable pool space and then only trade for it after Sasaki has agreed to sign for that amount. That way teams aren’t trading stuff on spec and being left empty-handed if Sasaki goes elsewhere. But if rival teams know you have to acquire that pool space, it gives them leverage in trade negotiations for it.
The Yankees have already acquired $1.3 million in pool space this signing period via trades involving JT Brubaker and Caleb Ferguson, so they can only acquire another $1.49 million before they max out at just shy of $3 million of remaining pool space. The other clubs listed above have not, to my knowledge, traded for 2024 pool space and can still acquire the entirety of their maximum allowed amount. For those teams, that number is (remember, this is based on their initial pool):
- Los Angeles Dodgers – $3,555,000
- Baltimore Orioles – $4,268,880
- New York Yankees – $1,491,320
- San Francisco Giants – $3,555,000
- Boston Red Sox – $3,555,000
- Detroit Tigers – $3,912,000
- Chicago White Sox – $3,555,000
As you can see, the Orioles can technically outmuscle and overtake the Dodgers in available pool space between now and the end of the signing period by about $400,000, at a shade over $6.4 million. But of course, if Sasaki decides to come over this winter rather than in 2026 when he’d be paid more, it’s perhaps an indication that money is not the most meaningful driver for him and that he might just sign where he feels most comfortable (which people in baseball generally believe to be the Dodgers) rather than where his bonus would be the biggest. The potential for other streams of income will likely be most plentiful in LA, too. If Sasaki is posted this offseason, he’ll be set for free agency at age 29, after the 2030 season.
I have dissenting sources who believe the Marines don’t have enough incentive to post him this offseason, and that Sasaki’s inability to stay healthy for a whole season helps them make the case for keeping him. As you can see from the posting rules, the math pretty clearly incentivizes Chiba Lotte to wait until Sasaki is exempt from the bonus pool cap before posting him if they want to maximize their fee, not to mention that waiting to post him would also mean having a national superstar on their team for two more seasons, with all that comes with it. The Orix Buffaloes received a $50 million posting fee for Yamamoto’s record-breaking contract, while if Sasaki gets a $6 million deal, his posting fee will be a mere $1.25 million. Even when Ohtani came over and signed for $2.3 million, the posting system rules at the time (again, check out that glossary link for the timeline) allowed the Hokkaido Fighters to cash in for $20 million. As Janes notes in her piece linked above, “a player can work with a team to include a clause in his contract, which could, in theory, dictate an earlier posting. But those clauses are not standard and are rarely made public.” She also notes that it’s currently unknown if such a clause exists in Sasaki’s contract.
What About Posting Sasaki in the 2025 Signing Period?
If the Marines do post Sasaki, presumably at his behest, they could decide to wait until the calendar turns over to January 2025 so he can sign when the 2025 international signing period begins, which would give him access to a different collection of teams. So who has the most pool space left in 2025? That’s a much harder question to answer. Deals with players for 2025 only exist as verbal commitments right now. We know teams’ 2025 pool amounts, but verbal deals aren’t logged as official by the league until they’re official in the current, active signing period. When a player comes to a verbal agreement with a team, especially if it’s for seven figures or more, word tends to spread to other teams, sometimes coming directly from a player’s camp as they inform losing clubs that they’ve been outbid. Teams track future agreements on their own because it’s important for their decision making and strategy to know how much space other teams have left and how much is left across the league as a whole. But because these verbally committed amounts currently only exist in teams’ internal systems based on word of mouth, what my sources have listed for 2025 varies quite a bit org to org. That said, there are still some clear patterns. Here’s a general idea of what I’ve gleaned:
- Always mentioned among the top uncommitted 2025 bonus pools: Guardians
- Often mentioned among the top: Orioles, Phillies, Pirates, Rangers
- Sometimes mentioned among the top: Red Sox, Cubs, Royals, A’s, Mariners, Blue Jays
- Rarely mentioned, but mentioned: White Sox, Tigers, Dodgers, Cardinals, Rays
Again, this is inexact. I think there’s signal here because of the consistency with which those top five or so teams have been mentioned, but if you want an example of the variance here, one source told me a team has $3 million left to spend while another told me they were basically tapped out. According to most of my sources, the peak uncommitted 2025 pool amounts seem to be approaching $4 million, but more often, the top teams are thought to have roughly $3 million left, with a bigger cluster of teams in the $2.5-ish million tier below them. If you look again at the remaining 2024 amounts and compare it to the number of teams that have $2.5 million (plus what they can trade for) at the start of 2025, Sasaki has more money and options available to him once the new signing period starts, but none of those is the Dodgers.
I’ve also had sources remind me that commitments might be broken to free up pool space in pursuit of Sasaki. This is only a 2025 possibility and not a 2024 one, as deals in the latter signing period are actually done. I’m not sure how comfortable teams will be breaking verbal agreements if Sasaki continues to look like he has so far this year, or if they’ll be dissuaded by the optics of reneging, which I think most people would consider a crummy thing to do. Every year there tends to be at least one big-money agreement that gets broken, but the profile around Sasaki is enormous compared to all but a few international amateurs. Everyone will know. It’ll definitely cause an online kerfuffle and might become the type of thing that breaks through to broader sports media or sparks meetings at the league office about how to handle it.
Let’s Recap
If Roki Sasaki gets posted this offseason (which people in baseball generally believe to be the case), the Dodgers are both the rumored favorites to sign him and the team that currently has the most remaining pool space to do so. If it’s announced in the fall that he’s going to be posted, teams may quickly trade for pool space in the 45-day window they’ll have to woo Sasaki to make him their most competitive offer.
The Orioles can trade for enough space to surpass the Dodgers in 2024 and are also generally believed to have a competitive amount of 2025 space to make a run at Sasaki if his posting timeline ends up occurring after the new year. The January/February 2025 field would be more crowded and probably more lucrative for Sasaki and the Marines, but if he wants to be posted this offseason, that might be an indication that he doesn’t really care about maxing out his money, at least on this contract. The Guardians seem to have the most money left for the 2025 signing period right now, but other teams could trade for the pool space to compete with them, and maybe even pass them. Regardless, a thing to monitor the rest of the year is how Sasaki looks, because while he’s still really nasty, he hasn’t been anywhere close to his peak form. That won’t necessarily change the way teams pursue him, however, because the amount of money a team would shell out for Sasaki this offseason would be dwarfed by his potential.
