Roki Sasaki’s agent calls it ‘poor sportsmanship’ amid Dodgers rumors

Speculation that right-handed Nippon Professional Baseball star Roki Sasaki would likely sign with the Dodgers – or even have a predetermined “handshake” agreement to sign in LA once formally posted by the Chiba Lotte Marines – has a sharp rebuke from its representatives. Wasserman’s agent Joel Wolfe emphatically denied there was any truth to these rumors, telling Evan Drellich of The Athletic:

“While a bunch of executives who should know me better and do a lot of business with me insult my integrity by insinuating that I was part of some nefarious deal, in reality this is just bad sportsmanship.”

Much of the speculation surrounding the Dodgers and Sasaki stems from the fact that LA has the largest remaining amount in their 2024 international bonus pool: approximately $2.5 million. There’s the fact that the Dodgers employ a few high-profile Japanese stars, Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto – Wolfe and Wasserman represent the latter. Of course, Wolfe/Wasserman are no strangers to representing high-profile international talent. They also represented NPB stars such as Kodai Senga and Including Seiya Suzuki in recent years.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred proposed this week that Sasaki’s post will likely extend into the 2025 signing period, which is a key to the thinking behind the Dodgers having an edge due to their remaining amount of international pool space. When the 2025 signing period opens on January 15, the Dodgers will be tied with the Giants for smallest. pool in play for $5,146,200, per Baseball America. (The Dodgers forfeited two draft picks and $1 million in international pool space when they signed Ohtani last season.)

All clubs can acquire additional bonus pool space, which is tradable in $250,000 increments. However, a club can only acquire a maximum of 60% of the initial pool allocation. For the Dodgers, that means they get to offer a bonus of about $8.25 million to Sasaki, and even that would require trading a lot of assets to acquire the maximum $3.09 million in additional cap space they can add. Each of the Reds, Tigers, Marlins, Twins, Brewers, A’s, Mariners and Rays will start the 2025 period with pools of $7,555 million. The Padres, another highly talked about landing spot for Sasaki, will start 2025 with a pool of $6.26 million.

In theory, each of these teams with a pool of $7.555 million could offer a maximum bonus of just over $12 million if they manage to acquire the full 60% of the potential additional space. The Padres and others in their group could reach just over $10 million.

In practice, it is unlikely that any other club could acquire such a large amount of international funds. Teams around the league continue to turn their noses up at so-called rules that prevent them from making up-front deals with teenage talent on the international free agent market. Most clubs have already committed the bulk of their 2025 pools in handshake deals with potential teenagers in Latin America. Whichever club signs Sasaki will likely do so at the cost of breaking existing agreements with amateurs in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and other Latin American countries. Likewise, teams that not think they have a real chance of signing Sasaki will be reluctant to trade significant portions of their bonus pool since so many of those dollars are effectively tied up elsewhere.

Baseball America’s Ben Badler took an in-depth look about the ripple effects of Sasaki’s signing, which last week may have extended into next year’s window before Manfred publicly suggested it was likely. Badler reports that the Dodgers and Padres have committed less of their 2025 pool to Latin American deals than most clubs in the league, likely due to their hopes that Sasaki would be drafted and positioned to make the best offer.

There will likely be clubs willing to scrap their existing verbal agreements to pursue Sasaki fully. Some of those teams will inherently have more to offer the right-hander. The trickle-down effect could see players who thought they would sign for a Sasaki bidder instead explore last-minute deals with other clubs, creating a domino effect across the Latin American market.

Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic also tackled this issue, examining the many pitfalls of a flawed international free agent system that the league and the MLBPA have yet to adequately address. As he notes, it feels downright ridiculous that a player like Sasaki, who has dominated the NPB for the past four seasons and just turned 23, is being categorized alongside a 16-year-old talent from Latin America. Rosenthal suggested that the league separate Sasaki from international bonus pools but not make him an unrestricted free agent; instead, he should limit his bonus to the $7.555 million the top teams will have during next year’s signing period. That in itself is of course an imperfect solution. It could push Sasaki to one of the commonly expected landing spots (LA or San Diego) anyway; all teams would effectively be on a level playing field, and a win-now club on the West Coast might have more appeal than a Midwest team with less certain playoff aspirations.

There is no perfect solution that can be brought forward in the coming weeks. Sasaki’s decision to leave hundreds of millions of dollars on the table — Yamamoto waited until he was 25 years old to shed his “amateur status” and signed a $325 million contract in LA — creates an impossible situation for Major League Baseball and its current international amateur line-up.

This situation will be a talking point, if not the focal point, during subsequent discussions about a potential international draft in the next wave of collective bargaining between MLB and the Players Association. For now, it’s a messy situation that will result in a lot of accusations, finger-pointing and probably some rejected Latin American prospects looking for new arrangements.