Mandatory Credit: Sam Navarro-USA TODAY Sports

The Los Angeles Dodgers have agreed to terms with Japanese right-handed pitcher Roki Sasaki, continuing an excellent offseason.

Sasaki announced his decision on his Instagram, which was picked up by Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic:

 

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Sasaki is 23 and has spent his entire professional career with NPB’s Chiba Lotte Marines. He was 10-5 with a 2.35 ERA last season, albeit in only 111 innings over 18 games. For his career, Sasaki is 30-15 with a 2.02 ERA. He is a strikeout artist, posting 11.4 strikeouts per nine innings (K/9) over four seasons.

The defending World Series champion Dodgers continue to get stronger. For the rest of baseball, however, this is very much the rich getting richer. The Dodgers’ rotation in 2025 has the potential to be a once-in-a-generation type. Three Japanese aces at the top; Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and now Sasaki.

Talk about a baseball hydra, right? What’s more is that the Dodgers basically paid pocket change for Roki Sasaki. International signing rules mean that while Sasaki may get a signing bonus—likely $5-8 million—he can only sign a minor league deal. And because of service time manipulation, odds are Sasaki starts his MLB career as a Bonus Baby in the minors.

And on the other side of the coin, this could prove a blessing in disguise for the Dodgers. Roki Sasaki, for all of his talent, comes with some injury concerns. He missed time with shoulder and oblique trouble last year, and his usually overpowering velocity dipped accordingly.

By comparison, his future teammate Yamamoto signed a $325 million contract with the Dodgers last winter and only managed 90 regular season innings thanks to shoulder soreness.

The Dodgers won out among the other two finalists, the San Diego Padres and Toronto Blue Jays. The Padres were particularly intriguing, given Sasaki’s relationship with veteran Yu Darvish.

Instead, he’ll don the Dodger Blue and join what’s shaping up to be quite the high-powered baseball machine.

Josh Benjamin has been a staff writer at ESNY since 2018. He has had opinions about everything, especially the Yankees and Knicks. He co-hosts the “Bleacher Creatures” podcast and is always looking for new pieces of sports history to uncover, usually with a Yankee Tavern chicken parm sub in hand.