Thursday, January 15 is the beginning of MLB’s 2025 international signing period, and begins an eight-day window to sign Sasaki, the 23-year-old pitcher who could make an immediate impact for his new team.
This coming week will commence the full Roki Sasaki sprint to the finish, with Major League Baseball’s international signing period opening on Wednesday and Sasaki’s deadline to sign coming the following Thursday, January 23.
Sasaki’s quest to be great, and to prove himself against top competition in MLB, compelled him to come west two years before it would have been much more beneficial financially for him to do so. The Dodgers have long been interested in the right-hander who had a 2.02 ERA in 414⅔ innings with the Chiba Lotte Marines in Japan.
Jen Ramos Eisen at Defector compared the media scrum at the winter meetings of Sasaki’s agent Joel Wolfe to a mosh pit, and also succinctly described what makes the 23-year-old right-hander so enticing to major league teams.
“Sasaki is a very unusual sort of free agent: much closer to big-league ready than the teenagers typical of the international free agent class,” Ramos Eisen wrote, “but subject to restrictive bonus in a way that last year’s blue-chip NPB posting, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, was not.”
Because of the limited bonus restrictions of the international signing period, teams in the running for Sasaki could end up going back on earlier verbal agreements with prospects previously committed for 2025. Ben Badler at Baseball America wrote about this practice, including one Dodgers-related example:
In one case, a team has already lost a player it expected to sign. Dominican shortstop Darell Morel, a lanky 6-foot-5 lefthanded hitter with big power upside, was set to be one of the Dodgers’ top 2025 signings. With the uncertainty of the Dodgers’ situation given that they might land Sasaki, Morel now is set to sign with the Pirates. In fact, Sasaki’s decision—or indecision, at this point—will pay off for Morel, who will sign for close to $1.8 million, a bonus that’s around twice as much money he would have gotten from the Dodgers.
The Dodgers on Thursday traded catcher Diego Cartaya to the Twins for minor league pitcher Jose Vasquez. Eric Longenhagen at FanGraphs analyzed the trade, and said of the once-top-prospect catcher, “In the two seasons since then, though, Cartaya has either plateaued or regressed in basically every facet of the game.”
Longenhagen sees a future in relief for Vasquez, but his path to the majors could be a long one:
He’s a physical, 220ish-pound 20-year-old who has had trouble harnessing his 94-97 mph fastball, which sometimes has very heavy late sink. His 84-88 mph slider is curt and cuttery at times, but it flashes bat-missing two-plane shape and above-average length. Vasquez’s realistic ceiling is better than a generic middle reliever, but he’s maybe a half decade away from the bigs.