Sasaki signs Dodgers contract, making Giants’ task even tougher

Sasaki signs Dodgers contract, making Giants’ task even tougher originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO — Giants officials have believed for over a year that Roki Sasaki would end up in Los Angeles. On Friday, one of the best right-handed pitching prospects in the world made it official.

Sasaki announced on his personal Instagram page that he has signed a minor league contract with the Dodgers, who now have put together one of the most talented rotations in MLB history.

The Giants were granted an in-person meeting with Sasaki last month but never had much hope of convincing him to pass on the Dodgers, and they were told earlier this week that they were not a finalist.

Sasaki joins a rotation that includes Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, Shohei Ohtani and young depth options. After winning the World Series last fall, the Dodgers will enter the 2025 season as overwhelming favorites in the National League West, a division that included another Sasaki suitor in addition to the Giants.

The finalists for Sasaki reportedly were the Dodgers, San Diego Padres and Toronto Blue Jays, but that was likely overstated. The industry has long felt Sasaki would join Ohtani and Yamamoto in Los Angeles, and there was seemingly nothing that could change his mind.

The Giants scouted Sasaki throughout his time with the Chiba Lotte Marines in Japan and a group of team executives flew down to Los Angeles last month to meet with him for about two hours. Sasaki’s agent, Joel Wolfe, twice met with reporters after his client was posted and tried to make it clear that the field was wide open, but the perception all along was that Sasaki would choose between the Dodgers and Padres.

Giants general manager Zack Minasian announced on Monday that the Giants were out and other big-market teams soon followed.

Sasaki, 23, is viewed as one of the best prospects to ever come to MLB from Japan and he was rated as the top international player available in this year’s signing period, which officially opened on Jan. 15. The right-hander has a triple-digits fastball, dominant splitter and plus slider and is viewed by scouts as a future ace.

New president of baseball operations Buster Posey made no secret of how impressed he was by Sasaki as he prepared to meet with him last month.

“I was watching some of his highlights and it’s kind of next-level, mind-blowing type of stuff with the fastball and then the split off of that. Those are the two (pitches) that really stood out in my mind. He’s a great one,” Posey said on the Giants Talk Podcast. “(The situation is) very unique and it’s a credit to him as a player, too, right? His willingness to come over when he’s coming, he’s giving up a lot of money. He could have waited a couple of more years and been really primed up, so I think it just shows his willingness to just go ahead and put his stamp on the big leagues.”

Sasaki potentially gave up hundreds of millions short-term by coming over to Major League Baseball before the age of 25, at which point he would have been a true free agent and could have cashed in as Yamamoto did a year ago.

That’s part of what makes this signing particularly painful for the Giants, Padres and others. It wasn’t the money this time. Sasaki just wanted to be a Dodger, and on Friday that became official.

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