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Every team in baseball should have been bending over backward to sign Roki Sasaki, the sensational 23-year-old Japanese pitcher who entered the posting system from NPB to MLB. In order to play in America before reaching nine years of professional experience, Sasaki decided to enter the league on a standard rookie contract, so all he'll cost the team that lands him is their allotment of international bonus pool money. According to Sasaki's agent, Joel Wolfe, 20 teams made presentations to Sasaki's team, and Sasaki elected to meet with seven of them: the Cubs, Dodgers, Giants, Mets, Padres, Rangers, and Yankees. The Red Sox didn't make the cut. Wolfe, has not eliminated the possibility of Sasaki meeting with additional teams in person, but it seems clear that the Red Sox are out.
According to Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe, "The Red Sox put together a slick multi-layered proposal for Sasaki that focused on his future development, biomechanics, and the team’s young core of talent." The team’s inability to earn a meeting with Sasaki is ultimately a reflection of the struggles the organization has faced in the past three years. The Red Sox have more international free-agent bonus pool money available than all seven of the contenders. This should have been an advantage, albeit a small one, as money clearly isn't Sasaki's main motivator. The Red Sox can't blame it all on geography either, as the lucky seven aren't limited to the West Coast. That said, the Dodgers, Padres, and Giants are considered the frontrunners.
Signing the 23-year-old righty would have been a coup, but it also would have been interesting from a roster-construction perspective, considering the depth of the pitching staff. The team is already contemplating a six-man rotation, a serious concern for Sasaki, who threw just 111 innings in 2024 and whose career-high is a scant 129 1/3. It's still unclear who exactly will start the season in the rotation and who will start in the bullpen. Lucas Giolito and Patrick Sandoval are returning from injury, and Garrett Crochet and Walker Buehler will likely have their workloads limited. But regardless of the details, signing Sasaki would have improved the team in a major way and stood as a testament to the its ability to attract free agents.
The 6-foot-3 Sasaki has attracted the attention of MLB teams since he was a high schooler with a 100-mph fastball. The Chiba Lotte Marines selected him first overall in the NPB draft, and he has run a career 2.10 ERA and a 0.89 WHIP while striking out more than 10 batters per nine innings. Sasaki's bread and butter is a splitter that produced an absurd 57% whiff rate in 2024. For context, during the 2024 MLB season, there were 1,724 different pitches that got thrown in at least 30 plate appearances. Only two of them ran a higher whiff rate than Sasaki's splitter: Josh Hader's slider (60.2%) and Fernando Cruz's splitter (59.3%). Sasaki's fastball averaged just under 97 mph in 2024, down a couple ticks from 2023, but it's still a formidable weapon, and his slider also grades out as above-average.
It would be reasonable to view Boston's offseason as a success. The team acquired a legitimate ace in Crochet and signed bounce-back candidates in Buehler and Sandoval. However, the team has yet to make the big splash in free agency that it has been promising since the previous offseason. It's possible that Sasaki's camp noticed that the team has only handed out one multi-year deal, which went to Sandoval, who will miss much of its first season. One solution to the problem could simply be winning. In the past, the Sox were an ideal landing spot for free agents who wanted to win. A successful season from the Sox in 2025 could restore that reputation and help land big names in the future.
Sasaki's signing window runs from January 15 to 23, not that it should matter too much to Red Sox fans (unless he signs with the Yankees).
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