Roki Sasaki sweepstakes: Yankees 1st team to secure in-person meeting with Japanese ace
Roki Sasaki of the Lotte Marines pitches in a baseball game against the Hiroshima Carp at Mazda Stadium in the western Japan city of Hiroshima on June 8, 2024. (Kyodo)
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The New York Yankees are the first team to secure an in-person meeting with Japanese ace Roki Sasaki, who is preparing to jump from Nippon Professional Baseball to the majors in 2025.
General manager Brian Cashman confirmed the meeting, which will take place in California, at Max Fried’s introductory press conference on Wednesday.
“He’s obviously a tremendous talent,” Cashman, who said the meeting would take place soon, said. “No doubt about it, he has a chance to be one of the world’s great pitchers. It’d be nice to have Yankee Stadium be his home, but the decision will be up to him. All we can do is share everything and anything about ourselves and what we provide.”
Interested parties looking to negotiate with the 23-year-old right-hander first had to send video pitches. Sasaki and his agent, Joel Wolfe, have now begun alerting the teams that have made it to the next round of his posting.
Sasaki’s negotiation window will run until Jan. 23 at 5 p.m. ET, which comes roughly one week after every MLB team’s international bonus pool resets.
Because Sasaki is under 25, he can only sign a minor-league deal with an MLB club and then receive a signing bonus from the international bonus pool, which ranges from each team between $5 million and $8 million.
The Yankees will have an abundance of competition for Sasaki’s services, most notably a pair of west-coast teams in the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres. The Mets are also believed to be in the hunt, but it would not be a surprise if the majority of the league sent a pitch to Sasaki and Wolfe.
Developing into a superstar with the Cibba Lotte Marines, Sasaki went 29-15 in his NPB career, posting a 2.10 ERA, 505 strikeouts, and a 0.894 WHIP.
His fastball can regularly sit at 100 mph while his split-finger has been billed as a devastating putaway pitch.
Nabbing Sasaki would make the Yankees’ starting rotation one of the very best in all of baseball, especially in the American League. They signed Fried to put alongside Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon while also boasting the reigning AL Rookie of the Year, Luis Gil.
For more on the Yankees and Roki Sasaki, visit AMNY.com
