Roki Sasaki, a highly-touted Japanese pitcher, will be part of Major League Baseball’s 2025 international signing class, commissioner Rob Manfred confirmed during his media availability on Wednesday.
“It looks like … the signing there will happen in the new pool period,” Manfred said.
MLB’s annual international signing period opens up on January 15, meaning Sasaki will not sign before that date. Once Sasaki is posted, he will have 45 days to sign. Those 45 days are a formality, as Sasaki, who is ranked as the third-best player on The Athletic’s Free Agent Big Board, will have no shortage of suitors. Previously, the Chiba Lotte Marines, Sasaki’s club in Nippon Professional Baseball, announced that they will post the 23-year-old righty.
Because of his age, Sasaki will be considered an international amateur in MLB’s system, meaning that he would make the minimum salary and his bonus will be capped. Every MLB team is assigned a dollar amount to spend on international amateurs and cannot exceed it, although they can trade for some additional space. Teams on the low end are allotted $5.1 million for 2025 and $7.6 million on the high end. Therefore, both Sasaki’s salary and the 20 percent fee that will be paid to the Lotte Marines will be relatively small figures.
“I will do my best to climb up from a minor-league contract and become the best player in the world,” Sasaki said in a statement translated by Yakyu Cosmopolitan, “so I have no regrets about my one and only baseball career and can live up to the expectations of everyone who has supported me so far.”
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(Photo: AP / Eugene Hoshiko)
