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Nori Aoki To Retire At NPB Season’s End

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Former big league outfielder and current member of Nippon Professional Baseball’s Yakult Swallows Nori Aoki is set to retire following the 2024 campaign, per an announcement from the Swallows yesterday (hat tip to The Yomiuri Shimbun). Aoki, 42, spent parts of six seasons in the majors in addition to a lengthy career in Japan.

Aoki’s career first began with the Swallows back in 2004 when he debuted at the age of 22. He made it into just ten games with Yakult that year, going 3-for-15 at the plate with a walk, a stolen base, and six strikeouts. That tiny sample size did nothing to suggest what Aoki would go on to do in his first full season with the club, however, as he slashed an excellent .344/.387/.417 in 144 games during the 2005 season, becoming just the second player in NPB history (after Ichiro Suzuki) to collect 200 hits in a single season.

He improved to even greater heights throughout his mid-20s, slashing 15-to-20 homer power to go along with fantastic contact and baserunning skills. As his plate discpline developed, he even began to walk more than he struck out, leading to a dominant stretch of seasons from 2007 to 2010 where he walked at a 10.6% clip against a minuscule 9.8% strikeout rate in addition to his aforementioned solid power and impressive base-stealing abilities, and even crossed the 200-hit barrier for a second time in 2010 to become the only NPB player in history to achieve the feat twice.

Given the excellence he had demonstrated throughout his time with the Swallows, it was hardly a surprise when he was quickly snapped up by the Brewers on a two-year deal after being posted for major league clubs prior to the 2012 season. In Milwaukee, Aoki was a slightly above average hitter with a solid .287/.355/.399 slash line. While he only hit a combined 18 home runs over his two seasons with the Brewers, he swiped 50 bags while hitting 57 doubles and 7 triples in that same period. That was a strong enough performance for Milwaukee brass to pick up Aoki’s club option for the 2014 season, but he did not last the offseason with the club and was swapped to the Royals in a deal that brought lefty Will Smith to the Brewers.

After departing the Brewers, Aoki wouldn’t stick around with an MLB club for more than a season at the time for the rest of his time in stateside ball. After acting as the regular right fielder in Kansas City for the club’s AL pennant-winning 2014 season, Aoki departed in free agency to sign with the Giants but was limited to just 93 games when he suffered a broken leg and a concussion in two separate hit-by-pitch incidents. Aoki then signed a one-year deal with the Mariners in 2016 but began to show some signs of decline, notably stealing only seven bases in sixteen attempts with the worst strikeout and walk numbers of his MLB career, though he did display his best power numbers since his rookie 2012 campaign with the Brewers.

Aoki’s final season in the big leagues came back in 2017 and saw him change uniforms several times. The veteran outfielder was claimed off waivers from the Mariners by the Astros during the 2016-17 offseason. Aoki struggled somewhat through 70 games with Houston, however, and ended up traded to the Blue Jays at the deadline that year alongside Teoscar Hernandez in a deal that brought Francisco Liriano to Houston. Aoki managed to catch fire down the stretch, however, and while his playing time was further split between the Blue Jays and Mets over the final two months of the season he slashed .281/.294/.594 for Toronto in August before slashing .284/.371/.373 in Queens that September.

Following the end of his MLB career, Aoki returned home to the Swallows and has played for the club in each of the past seven seasons. Now 42, the veteran is the league’s oldest active player and has collected more than 7,000 plate appearances with a .313/.392/.445 slash line in 1,713 NPB games. Between NPB and MLB play, Aoki has stepped up to the plate more than 10,000 times with 2,765 hits, 470 doubles, 51 triples, 179 homers and 279 stolen bases. We at MLBTR congratulate Aoki on a fine career and wish him all the best in his post-playing pursuits.

Latest On Roki Sasaki’s Potential Posting

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Roki Sasaki would be one of the most talented players in the upcoming free agent class if he were available. The 6’2″ right-hander has been a star in Japan for the past four seasons. He is widely regarded as one of the best, if not the best, pitchers currently in NPB. Sasaki won’t turn 23 until November and would be a top target for any number of major league clubs.

His availability is by no means guaranteed. While MLB teams have kept a close eye on Sasaki’s status for years, he doesn’t have the ability to force his way to the majors anytime soon. As with all NPB players, he’d need nine years of service time in Japan before he qualifies for international free agency.  The only way for Sasaki to make the jump to the majors earlier than that is with the cooperation of the Chiba Lotte Marines, his NPB club.

The Marines could agree to make Sasaki available to MLB teams via the posting system. The star pitcher asked them to do just that last offseason; the team declined the request, leaving Sasaki without much of a choice but to return for his fourth full season there. It seems the way that process unfolded left the pitcher displeased.

Jeff Passan of ESPN writes that Sasaki’s relationship with the Marines is damaged by the team’s denial of his posting request. According to Passan, Sasaki is likely to renew his request for the Marines to post him during the upcoming offseason. Yet it’s entirely possible — perhaps likely — that the team will decline to make him available yet again.

There isn’t much of an incentive for the Marines to let Sasaki walk this winter. Their only potential benefit would be a reputational boost of accommodating the wish of their star player to test himself against MLB hitters. The details of the posting system and MLB’s international bonus pool rules make it far more advantageous for the Marines to hold Sasaki past his 25th birthday.

International players who are under the age of 25 are considered amateurs and are subject to bonus pool restrictions. They are technically only allowed to sign minor league contracts (although an MLB team would surely select Sasaki onto the major league roster by the start of the season).

The far bigger drawback is that teams have a hard cap on spending on international amateurs. While the precise amount varies by team, Baseball America’s Ben Badler reported in April that next year’s bonus pool allotments top out at roughly $7.56MM. Teams can tack on another few million dollars via trade, but it’s a marginal difference. Even if a team maxed out its bonus pool and offered the highest amount to Sasaki (punting the chance to sign any other amateurs of significance for the year), his signing bonus would land somewhere in the $11MM range.

That’s obviously nowhere near the open market value for arguably the best pitcher in Japan. The cases of Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto are illustrative. Ohtani made the jump to MLB at age 23 and was subject to the bonus pool limitations. He signed with the Angels in 2017 for $2.3MM. Yamamoto, who waited until he was 25 to come over, signed a $325MM contract last offseason that represented the largest deal ever for a free agent pitcher. The bonus pool restrictions very likely made a difference of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Sasaki seems willing to live with those constraints to get to the majors as quickly as possible. That doesn’t mean the Marines are willing to do the same. The posting agreement between MLB and Nippon Professional Baseball ties the NPB team’s compensation to the value of the free agent contract. An MLB team signing a posted player pays a fee to the Japanese team on top of what goes to the player. The fee is a fixed amount calculated as 20% of a deal’s first $25MM, 17.5% of the next $25MM, and 15% of further spending.

Yamamoto’s $325MM deal came with a windfall for his former team, the Orix Buffaloes. The Dodgers paid the Buffaloes $50.625MM to release him from his contract. If the Marines were to let Sasaki walk this winter, they’d get a small fraction of that amount because of the bonus restrictions. A $10MM bonus for Sasaki would come with a $2MM posting fee for the Marines. That’s meager compensation for parting ways with their 23-year-old ace.

That could all point to the Marines holding Sasaki for two more years. If the team waits to make him available until the 2026-27 offseason, there’d be no limit on his signing bonus — and therefore no indirect cap on the posting fee that the team could receive. That’d presumably only further irritate Sasaki, but it doesn’t seem the pitcher has any leverage to force the team’s hand.

Ohtani making the jump to the majors in 2017-18 shows that it isn’t impossible for a top Japanese free agent to leave early in his posting window. Yet there are a few distinctions between Ohtani’s case and the situation in which Sasaki finds himself.

Jorge Castillo and Jack Harris wrote in the Los Angeles Times last winter that Ohtani had a stipulation in his contract with his NPB team, the Nippon-Ham Fighters, that allowed him to enter the posting system at any time. While Castillo and Harris wrote at the time that “Sasaki is thought to also have that clause in his deal” with the Marines, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Passan stated this morning that “Lotte controls the entire process and can keep Sasaki through the 2026 season if it so desires.” That the Marines were able to prevent Sasaki from being posted last winter — ostensibly against his wishes and in a manner that strained his relationship with the team — points to the club indeed having the final say.

The posting system was also different at the time in which Ohtani came over. While the posting fee is now strictly tied to the signing bonus amount, that was not the case in 2017. The previous posting system allowed an NPB team to name a price up to $20MM, independent of the bonus amount, which they’d require to grant the player permission to move to MLB. The Fighters established the maximum $20MM price, which the Angels happily paid to get Ohtani for a modest bonus. The Marines don’t have that option, so the Fighters collected a posting fee that is 10 times (or more) what Chiba Lotte would receive for Sasaki next winter.

That presents a significant impediment to Sasaki joining a major league team before 2027. USA Today’s Bob Nightengale wrote a couple weeks ago that some MLB executives felt the pitcher might prefer to stay in Japan for another season, though it seems the Marines are the far bigger obstacle.

Lotte does not appear to be under any contractual pressure to let him leave within the next two years. Sasaki is nowhere close to the nine-year threshold for international free agency, nor the eight-year threshold that would permit him to sign with another NPB club. The NPB Players Association has begun an effort to reduce the free agency cutoffs, but that’s an ambitious collective bargaining effort that isn’t likely to be achieved in the next few months.

Sasaki has a 2.01 earned run average in 380 2/3 career innings at Japan’s top level. This hasn’t been his best season, as he carries a personal-worst 2.45 ERA through 77 frames and missed some time with arm discomfort. He nevertheless remains an incredible talent. He has struck out nearly a third of opponents in his career and has fanned 28.7% of batters faced this season. Scouts credit him with a triple-digit fastball and a potential 70-grade (plus-plus) splitter.

He’s perhaps most famous for his stretch of dominance in April 2022, when he followed up a 19-strikeout perfect game with another eight perfect innings before finally giving up a single to start the ninth. He struck out 11 over 7 2/3 innings of four-run ball for Japan’s championship team in the 2023 World Baseball Classic.

NPB Players Pushing For Earlier Free Agency

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Just like their counterparts in Major League Baseball, the players in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball have various ongoing labor battles in the context of their league. Evan Drellich of The Athletic took an extensive look at some of the current discussion topics in a column published this morning.

Some of the battles involves things like endorsement rights but fans of MLB will likely be most interested to know that the players are fighting for earlier free agency, which could allow some of them to make the move to North America sooner.

As laid out by Drellich, NPB players have two different forms of free agency. A player can achieve domestic free agency after seven or eight years in the league, depending on whether the player was drafted out of high school or college. Unlocking that right gives a player the ability to sign with another NPB club. But getting full international free agency, allowing a player to sign with an MLB club, takes nine years.

The Japan Professional Baseball Players Association is trying to lower both of those numbers to six years, the same amount of service time that MLB players need for free agency. One source tells Drellich that the league was willing to offer a reduction in domestic free agency but not international free agency, though the full details of that offer aren’t publicly known.

NPB players are often made available to MLB clubs before those nine years are up via the posting system. Under that system, the player’s NPB club posts them for MLB clubs, opening a 45-day negotiating window. If a player signs with an MLB club in that time, the NPB club gets a posting fee, which is relative to the size of the contract the player got from the MLB club. Bigger deals naturally lead to bigger posting fees. In an extreme example, when the Dodgers signed Yoshinobu Yamamoto to a 12-year, $325MM deal this offseason, they also had to pay almost $51MM to the Orix Buffaloes, the NPB team that posted him.

Although Yamamoto was able to come over to the majors at the relatively young age of 25, other pitchers often have to wait longer. Shota Imanaga, for example, was just posted in the most recent offseason and signed with the Cubs. He had pitched in parts of eight NPB seasons through 2023 but still didn’t have full international free agency. He is now in his debut MLB season at the age of 30.

There’s also no guarantee that a player will be made available via the posting system. Kodai Senga had to reach full international free agency before coming to the majors because his NPB club, the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, has a team policy against posting their players. Senga signed with the Mets going into 2023, which was his age-30 season.

If the rules were to change, future players in a similar position to Imanaga or Senga could make the move to North America a few years earlier. That would increase their earning power in a couple of ways. Teams clearly value youth, as shown in the massive guarantee that Yamamoto got. Senga and Imanaga got $75MM and $53MM guarantees, respectively. Part of that may be due to the Dodgers valuing Yamamoto as more talented, but it’s also fair to assume that he wouldn’t have got as much money if he were heading into his age-30 season like Senga and Imanaga.

Beyond the age factor, if a player is able to reach full free agency at a young age, the lack of a posting fee could mean more money going directly to the player. The Cubs were willing to give Imanaga a $53MM guarantee but also paid $9.825MM to the Yokohama BayStars, his NPB club. Theoretically, that willingness to spend north of $60MM on Imanaga could have seen that amount of money go straight to him if he were a free agent, as opposed to the BayStars getting a big cut.

There’s nothing in Drellich’s article to suggest that changes are coming to the system that would affect younger players such as Roki Sasaki. Yamamoto was made available to MLB clubs just after turning 25, a notable age since that is when international players are no longer considered “amateurs” under MLB rules. Before turning 25, players are subject to the international bonus pool system, where each team gets roughly $4-8MM to spend on player bonuses. Broadly speaking, the small-market teams get bigger pools and the large-market clubs get smaller ones.

If a player wants to make the move before turning 25, they are therefore limited to a relatively modest bonus. For example, Shohei Ohtani left the NPB and signed with the Angels prior to his age-23 season. He received only a $2.3MM signing bonus at that time, obviously far less than what Yamamoto got by waiting until his 25th birthday.

Sasaki, who doesn’t turn 23 until November, may be in a similar boat to Ohtani. He turns 23 in November and there have been rumors that he may be posted this offseason. If that comes to pass, he would only be able to secure a small signing bonus of a few million bucks and there’s nothing to suggest that is changing.

Whether Sasaki is posted this winter or not is therefore another matter, but it could still be a notable change if it the JPBPA is successful in changing the free agency rules. In future, players as talented as Imanaga or Senga could have the chance to come over to Major League Baseball a few years earlier than under the current system, which could be a nice development both for those players and fans who want to see the best players competing against each other in North America.

It’s perhaps due to the constraints of the current system that another young Japanese player, Rintaro Sasaki, chose to play college ball in the United States rather than enter the NPB draft. While NPB clubs may not be excited about losing their control over players, they may also recognize that loosening the reins could reduce the chances of other players skipping the NPB entirely.

Whether the JPBPA will be successful remains to be seen. The system is not exactly analogous to the MLB-MLBPA dynamic. As laid out by Drellich, the collective bargaining agreement doesn’t have a set time limit like in North America, rather a rolling and ongoing negotiation. It’s also a complicated legal matter involving Japanese antitrust laws, with JPBPA set to file a challenge to the NPB’s reserve system at some point this year. Fans interested in getting into all the nitty-gritty details of the negotiations are encouraged to read the piece in full.

Doug Creek Passes Away

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Former major leaguer Doug Creek has passed away, according to multiple sources, including The Journal out of Martinsburg, West Virginia. The left-hander died at the age of 55 due to the effects of pancreatic cancer.

Creek was born in Winchester, Virginia in 1969 and went on to attend Georgia Tech. He worked as a starting pitcher for the Yellow Jackets and was drafted by the Cardinals with a seventh-round pick in 1991. In the minor leagues, he continued working out of the rotation until he got near the majors and was then shifted into a relief role.

He was able to make his major league debut with the Cards in 1995, tossing 6 2/3 scoreless innings that year. Prior to the 1996 season, he was traded to the Giants alongside Rich DeLucia and Allen Watson for Royce Clayton and a player to be named later, who was later named as Chris Wimmer.

Creek made 63 appearances for San Francisco in 1996 but with a 6.52 ERA. In 1997, an attempt was made to get Creek stretched back out, though without success. He had a 6.75 ERA in three major league starts and a 4.93 ERA in Triple-A. He went overseas for the 1998 season, pitching for the Hanshin Tigers of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball. He made six starts and one relief appearance with a 5.65 ERA.

He returned to North American ball and then spent the next few years as a journeyman left-hander, pitching for the Cubs, Devil Rays, Mariners, Blue Jays and Tigers. He finished his career with 289 1/3 innings pitched over 279 appearances. He had a 5.32 ERA, 22.2% strikeout rate and 15.1% walk rate. After leaving the baseball field, he headed out to the water. According to his obituary, he became a charter boat captain in Tampa Bay and competed as an angler on the Redfish Circuit.

We at MLBTR join the baseball world in sending our condolences to Creek’s family, friends, former teammates and coaches and all those mourning his passing.

Jeter Downs Signs With NPB’s Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks

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Catching up on some news that was set aside during the trade deadline frenzy, the Yankees announced yesterday that infielder Jeter Downs was released and signed with the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball.

Downs, 26, wasn’t a Yankee for very long. He was claimed off waivers from the Nationals in December, with the Yankees then passing him through waivers unclaimed in January. He didn’t have the right to elect free agency at that time and has been in the Yankees’ system in a non-roster capacity since then.

He has been having a decent year at Triple-A. In 69 games for Scranton Wilkes-Barre, he hit 10 home runs and slashed .264/.360/.498 for a wRC+ of 117. He also stole 15 bases while bouncing between second base, third base and shortstop.

Despite those decent numbers, he never got called up to the majors even though the Yankees have had plenty of infield challenges. Players like Gleyber Torres, DJ LeMahieu and Oswaldo Cabrera have had disappointing seasons so far and Jon Berti has been on the injured list for most of the year. But the club never felt compelled to call upon Downs and eventually acquired Jazz Chisholm from the Marlins and plugged him onto their roster. Since he was fairly blocked from getting any playing time in the Bronx, he will instead go overseas to see if this opportunity will work out for him.

Downs was once a top 100 prospect during his time in the Dodgers’ system, before being traded to the Red Sox in the now-infamous 2020 deal that sent Mookie Betts and David Price to Los Angeles. He struggled to live up to the hype in the subsequent seasons, hitting .200/.309/.365 in the minors over the 2021-23 campaigns. He was only given brief looks in the majors, producing a line of .182/.260/.273 in 50 plate appearances. He went from the Red Sox to the Nationals on waivers in December of 2022 but then the Yankees got him off waivers a year later, as mentioned.

If he fares well in Japan, he could intrigue teams based his past. He hit .267/.359/.458 in the minors from 2017 to 2019, though mostly at the lower levels, with only 12 games above High-A in that time. But he has the former prospect pedigree and was performing well in Triple-A this year. A nice run with the Hawks could perhaps lead the way to a return to the majors down the line, especially since he’s still only 26 years old.

Mike Ford Signs With NPB’s Yokohama DeNA BayStars

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Mike Ford has signed with the Yokohama DeNA BayStars of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, the team has announced. Ford was designated for assignment by the Reds earlier this season. He elected free agency rather than accepting an outright assignment to the minor leagues.

Ford, 32, signed with the Yankees as an undrafted free agent in 2013. Six years later, he made his MLB debut for the Bronx Bombers. A first baseman and designated hitter, the lefty batter made quite the impression in his rookie season, slugging 12 home runs in 50 games and putting up a .909 OPS. The following year, at 28 years old, he made his very first Opening Day roster.

Unfortunately for Ford, he struggled to replicate that early success over the rest of his tenure in pinstripes. He slashed .134/.250/.276 across 51 games in 2020 and ’21, and the Yankees designated him for assignment in June 2021. He then bounced between the Rays, Nationals, Mariners, Giants, Mariners (again), Braves, and Angels organizations before landing back with the Mariners for a third time ahead of the 2023 campaign. Four years after his breakout, Ford would put together the best season of his career. He forced his way to the majors with 13 home runs and a 1.031 OPS in 49 games at Triple-A, then hit another 16 home runs with a .798 OPS in 84 games for Seattle from June to October.

Despite his strong performance in 2023, the Mariners designated Ford for assignment at the end of the season. He signed a minor league deal with the Reds this past February, opted out in March, re-signed a week later, and then opted out again in early May. This time, he re-signed on a major league deal, but after going 9-for-60 with a .411 OPS in 17 games, he was designated for assignment at the end of the month. Before signing with the BayStars, he had been a free agent since May 31.

Coco Montes Expected To Sign With NPB’s Yomiuri Giants

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Infielder Coco Montes has an agreement with the Yomiuri Giants pending a physical, reports Francys Romero (X link). The South Florida product had been in Triple-A with the Rockies before being granted his release earlier this week.

Montes had a cup of coffee at the big league level a year ago. He appeared in 18 games for the Rox, hitting .184/.244/.316 over 41 plate appearances. Montes spent the remainder of the season with Triple-A Albuquerque, running a .317/.400/.551 slash line over 107 contests. Teams were skeptical about that production given Albuquerque’s very hitter-friendly nature and he cleared waivers in September.

The 27-year-old returned to the Isotopes this season. He has been one of the more productive hitters in the Pacific Coast League, turning in a .335/.414/.551 mark with nine homers through 297 plate appearances. While it wasn’t enough to get Montes another look in the Colorado infield, it caught the attention of the NPB’s Giants. He’ll head overseas for the first time in his career, a deal that surely comes with a nice pay bump relative to what he’d been making in Triple-A.

Report: MLB Teams Planning For Roki Sasaki Posting This Offseason

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Japanese pitching phenom Roki Sasaki had plenty of eyes on him this past offseason when it was reported that he had asked to be posted for major league clubs ahead of his age-22 campaign, and while he ultimately remained with Nippon Professional Baseball’s Chiba Lotte Marines for the 2024 campaign, that’s done little to quell speculation about his future in stateside baseball. That speculation may not be entirely unfounded, Chelsea Janes of The Washington Post reported this morning that MLB clubs are “planning” for the possibility that Sasaki is posted during the 2024-25 offseason. Neither Sasaki nor the Marines have confirmed the youngster’s plans for the future.

Sasaki is generally viewed as the biggest rising star in Japanese baseball today. MLBTR contributor Dai Takegami Podziewski discussed Sasaki back in September amid his return from an oblique issue that had sidelined him for most of the second half, noting his triple-digit velocity was present even in his abbreviated three-inning return to the league’s highest level. That outing contributed to a dominant overall line in NPB play last year, as Sasaki pitched to a 1.78 ERA while striking out a whopping 39.1% of batters faced in 91 innings of work.

As noted by both Podziewski and Janes, durability appears to be the only box left for Sasaki to check in the Pacific League, where he sports a career ERA of 2.03 across 337 1/3 innings of work. Sasaki’s career-high innings total as a professional to this point in his career stands at just 129 1/3, well below the 150-170 inning range that’s standard for front-of-the-rotation arms in Japan. For example, Dodgers right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto threw 171 innings between all levels of NPB play during his final season in Japan last year, while Cubs lefty Shota Imanaga completed 159 frames. Sasaki is currently on pace to reach that threshold this season, with a 2.18 ERA in 53 1/3 innings of work across eight starts while Janes notes that the righty threw 119 pitches in a start last week without issue.

While Sasaki and the Marines have been fairly tight-lipped about the right-hander’s future plans, Janes notes that people around Sasaki, including teammate and former big leaguer Gregory Polanco, have made it clear the right-hander is excited to make the jump to the majors. Whether that move will come following the 2024 campaign remains to be seen, although it’s worth noting that Janes suggests that some teams are keeping a portion of their international bonus pool available in case Sasaki is posted.

As a player under the age of 25, Sasaki would not be eligible for the typical posting process that Yamamoto and Imanaga both participated in this past offseason, where there are no limitations placed on the contract the player can sign. Instead, Sasaki would be considered an international amateur, who can only be offered a rookie contract in the majors along with a signing bonus that comes out of the signing club’s international bonus pool.

Given the substantial decrease in financial compensation available for both player and team if an NPB player is posted before his 25th birthday, it’s extremely rare for a player to take that avenue; to this point, Shohei Ohtani is the only player to make the jump from NPB to MLB using this method rather than arriving in the majors via the posting system or free agency. For Sasaki to follow in his footsteps, Lotte would have to agree to post the right-hander. Janes notes that one way a player could secure an early posting from his club is by stipulating it in his contract with the team, although it’s not known if Sasaki has such a clause in his deal with the Marines. Indeed, it’s not even known who currently represents Sasaki, although Janes notes that Wasserman’s Joel Wolfe, who serves as Yamamoto’s agent and negotiated his $325MM deal with the Dodgers, is “rumored” to be set to handle his move to the majors.

If Sasaki were to be posted this winter, he would join a 2024-25 free agent class that figures to be exceptionally deep in starting pitching talent with Walker Buehler, Max Fried, and Corbin Burnes among the front-of-the-rotation talents expected to be available. Previously reported rumblings among executives seems to indicate that the general expectation within the game is that Sasaki is most likely to sign with the Dodgers, though that appears to be nothing more than speculation at this point. After all, teams would enjoy a much more even financial playing field in bidding for his services this winter than one would typically associate with a free agent of his caliber thanks to the aforementioned spending restrictions regarding players posted before the age of 25. The Dodgers are joined by the Yankees, Mets, Cardinals, and Rangers among teams that have reportedly already begun to scout Sasaki’s NPB starts this season.

Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, Cardinals Among Teams Scouting Roki Sasaki

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Eight MLB teams sent representatives to watch NPB ace Roki Sasaki’s latest start, according to articles from Sports Hochi and Yahoo Japan, as relayed by Dylan Hernández of The Los Angeles Times and Andy Martino of SNY, respectively. Among those teams were the Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, and Cardinals.

Sasaki is just 22 years old and already one of the best pitchers in Japan. Over three NPB seasons, he has thrown 283 2/3 innings with 376 strikeouts and a 2.00 ERA. The ace made headlines last winter when he reportedly asked to be posted for MLB teams well ahead of the typical timeline – MLB does not allow players under 25 years old and with fewer than six professional seasons to sign anything more than a minor league contract. Ultimately, Sasaski re-signed with the Chiba Lotte Marines, temporarily putting a stop to any talk of his being posted. Still, he could make the same request this coming offseason. While he might be forfeiting a massive free agent payday if he is posted before his 25th birthday, he has made no secret of his desire to pitch in MLB.

It’s no surprise, then, that several MLB teams are showing interest in Sasaski. However, the two-time NPB All-Star might have already decided where he wants to pitch in 2025 and beyond. According to Bob Nightengale of USA Today, “several GMs” are under the impression that Sasaki “already has plans to sign with the Dodgers” during the 2024-25 offseason.

According to one general manager, “There’s no way he’s going anywhere else but the Dodgers. We all know it.” While that particular comment was spoken in no uncertain terms, it also sounds more like conjecture than insider knowledge. Indeed, this entire report may be more speculation on the part of the executives than anything else. After all, at least seven teams besides the Dodgers are actively scouting Sasaski, and they wouldn’t be doing so if they didn’t think they had a chance to secure his services in the future. Moreover, even if Sasaki truly does have his sights set on the Dodgers, the rest of the league will still have an opportunity to change his mind.

Franmil Reyes Signs With NPB’s Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters

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Jan. 29: The Fighters announced that they’ve signed Reyes.

Jan. 7: Franmil Reyes is on the verge of officially signing with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters of Nippon Professional Baseball, according to multiple reports out of the Dominican Republic.

Reyes hit .260/.325/.503 with 92 home runs with San Diego and Cleveland over 1540 plate appearances during the 2018-21 seasons.  Despite a lot of strikeouts in that span, Reyes looked like one of baseball’s up-and-coming sluggers before his performance took a sudden downturn.  Reyes has hit only .217/.268/.356 with 16 homers in 538 PA since the start of the 2022 season, while striking out over a third of the time.

Though the Guardians were in sore need of power during the 2022 season, Reyes’ struggles were so pronounced that Cleveland designated him for assignment that August, and he was quickly claimed by the Cubs off waivers but didn’t experience much of a bounce-back on his new team.  Reyes has subsequently signed minor league contracts with the Royals and Nationals within the last year, but his contribution to the 2023 Major League season consisted of just 19 games with Kansas City.  His last minor league came on July 8 with the Nationals’ Triple-A affiliate, and Washington released Reyes in August.

Rather than deal with the uncertainty of another minor league contract, Reyes will instead head to Japan on a guaranteed contract and in search of a fresh start to his career.  Reyes is still only 28, so there’s lots of time to potentially seek out a return to MLB if he gets on track with the Fighters, whether next winter or perhaps multiple years down the line.

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