Japanese RHP Roki Sasaki to be posted to MLB

Japanese star RHP Roki Sasaki will be coming to the MLB for the 2025 season.

The Chiba Lotte Marines of Nippon Professional Baseball announced Saturday morning that they will post the 23-year-old pitcher, making him available to all 30 MLB teams.

“Since I joined the team, the team has been listening to my thoughts about my future challenge in the MLB, and I am very grateful to the team for officially allowing me to post now,” Sasaki said in the team’s statement posted on X. “There were many things that did not go well during my five years with the Marines, but I was always supported by my teammates, staff, front office, and fans, and was able to come this far by concentrating only on baseball. I will do my best to work my way up from my minor contract to become the best player in the world, so that I will have no regrets in my one and only baseball career and so that I can live up to the expectations of everyone who has supported me this time.”

Both the Mets and Yankees scouted Sasaki earlier in the year and are thought to “have extreme interest” in him, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan. The Los Angeles Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals were among the other teams in attendance to scout the ace, and it’s expected that many other teams will try to go after the right-hander once he is posted.

Since Sasaki is being posted during the 2024-25 offseason and before his 25th birthday, he will be considered an international amateur free agent and can sign only a minor league contract. MLB rules do not allow players under 25 and with fewer than six professional seasons to sign anything but a minor league deal. His deal would count toward his signing team’s international bonus pool allotment.

Sasaki had requested to be posted for the 2024 season, but the request was denied.

This rule is the reason why star Shohei Ohtani, who was 23 at the time, signed a $2.315 million deal with the Los Angeles Angels in 2017. If Sasaki waited to sign, he could have gone after a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars, like Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers for 12 years and $325 million last December.

It’s currently unclear if Sasaki will be part of the 2024 or 2025 international amateur class. The MLB 2024 international signing period runs until Dec. 15, and the 2025 period begins Jan. 15. Once Sasaki is posted, he will have a 45-day window to sign with a major league team. Whichever team signs him will be able to add him to its major league roster for the 2025 season.

Last season, Sasaki went 10-5 with a 2.35 ERA, 129 strikeouts, and just 32 walks in 111 innings and 18 starts. He did miss some time during the 2024 season due to a torn oblique and right arm soreness. Over four seasons in NPB, Sasaki has gone 29-15 with a 2.10 ERA, 505 strikeouts, and 88 walks in 64 starts over 394.2 innings.