The upcoming Roki Sasaki posting could have big reverberations throughout MLB

The pending move from Nippon Professional Baseball to Major League Baseball by right-handed pitcher Roki Sasaki could create some chaos with MLB’s system to sign international amateurs.

Currently teams get limited pool amounts to sign these players, some as young as age 16. It is essentially a hard cap on the total amount a team can spend.

The issue here is that, at 23, Sasaki is too young to qualify to be signed as a “foreign professional” and he instead will be signed, per MLB rules, as an “international amateur” meaning he will be signed as a minor league free agent.

He is getting at most, the entire amount in the pool of the team he picks to sign with. In the international signing period that runs thru this Dec. 15, the Los Angeles Dodgers have the largest remaining pool amount, at $2,502,500 with the Orioles next at $2,147,300 followed by the New York Yankees at $1,487,200 and then San Francisco at $1,247,500.

Sasaki has not even been posted yet and that could lead his actual signing to occur after the beginning of a new international signing period on Jan. 15, 2025. At that point the bonus pools reset for all clubs for the Jan. 15 signing class. The top pools for several teams will have amounts of $7.555 million. The Orioles are in a group of teams that will have $6.908 million to spend.

Then, a team could offer Sasaki their entire pool amount to maximize his signing amount. The issue there will be that no doubt all these teams already have verbal commitments and agreements with young international players accounting for large portions (or even all) of their pool amounts. Do they then just renege on the previous agreements and give Sasaki his money? That is exactly what some team is expected to do as this player is expected to walk right into the majors and be a top rotation pitcher. And they can get him for a very modest amount. 

Last year, for Chiba Lotte, Sasaki went 10-5 with a 2.35 ERA over 111 innings with 32 walks, 129 strikeouts, a 1.036 WHIP with a 10.5 K per nine. Since 2021 in Nippon Professional Baseball, he has an ERA of 2.02 over 414 2/3 innings.

So potentially some 16-year-old player from the Dominican Republic, expecting to officially get life-changing money on Jan. 15, may learn that now his deal is dead. Some of these agreements are likely seven-figure deals.

Would it be poor form for a team to turn their back on that kid to sign Sasaki? Yes, it would. But if they don’t, their division rival would probably be happy to take him. You can't pass up Sasaki for a lottery ticket that may take years to get to the majors if they ever even make it. 

The long-term answer here is probably changing the rules so the next Sasaki can be a legit free agent and not be subject to the international rules. But now that would mean a player in Japan can play four years (as Sasaki has, or maybe even less) and then come to MLB for the big money while a current MLB player has to have six years of MLB service to have the same negotiating rights.

See why this is a problem?

The system is not perfect, and this proves it.

Any team, including the Orioles, could soon be put in the spot to tell some young international players, sorry, but we have a chance to sign Sasaki and we are not going to honor our previous agreement. In doing so they would get a potential difference-maker in their rotation, who has already had his seasoning and is ready to pitch for them under team control for six years.

O's add two to the roster: The Orioles added minor league right-handed pitchers Brandon Young and Kade Strowd to their 40-man roster yesterday afternoon. It was the deadline to add their own players to the 40-man ahead of the December Rule 5 draft.

Young, 26, went a combined 5-6 with a 3.57 ERA in 27 games between Double-A and Triple-A. He was named the winner of the Jim Palmer Award as the O's Minor League Pitcher of the Year for 2024. He fanned 10.7 per nine innings this season with a 40.9 K percentage at Double-A and 25.6 at Triple-A. Young is ranked as the club's No. 19 prospect by both Baseball America and MLBPipeline.com.

Young has had two Tommy John surgeries, including one at age 13. The second one came early in the 2022 season, he returned in mid-year 2023 and was an O's award winner this past season. Now he moves to the 40-man.

Strowd's 40-man inclusion comes as a suprise due to his stats at higher levels. A bullpen right-hander that can hit the high 90s, in 2023 he went 4-1 with a 5.20 ERA at Bowie. This past season, pitching nine games at Double-A and 37 with Triple-A Norfolk, he went 6-3 with a 5.44 ERA and 1.58 WHIP. He did fan 71 batters in 51 1.3 innings. 

Not a top 30 prospect, in December 2022 I wrote on a few minor leaguers that fly under the radar and included Strowd. In that entry I noted Strowd, taken by the O's in round 12 of the 2019 draft, was mostly a starting pitcher in college. It was noted that Strowd's fastball ranges from 94 to 98 mph and he mixes in a slider, curve and changeup. Some say he has “electric stuff.”

Now he has a spot on the O's 40-man roster.