Phillies say they would ‘love to have’ Roki Sasaki, a world-class pitcher from Japan

DALLAS — A year ago this week, seven Phillies officials boarded owner John Middleton’s private plane and flew across the country to meet a prized free-agent pitcher from Japan.

Time to gas up the jet again.

If the Soto Sweepstakes dominated the first half of baseball’s offseason, the second is about to be overtaken by Sasaki Mania. Roki Sasaki, a 23-year-old righty with a 100-mph fastball and superhero nickname (“Monster of the Reiwa Era”) was posted this week to MLB, which started a 45-day clock for him to sign a contract.

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The Phillies are interested, president of baseball ops Dave Dombrowski acknowledged here Tuesday. How interested?

“We would love to have, going into the future, Sasaki and [Andrew] Painter for years to come,” Dombrowski said from a 23rd-floor suite at the Hilton Anatole. “That would be pretty good.”

But the Phillies will have to get in line with, oh, about 29 other teams. And just like with Yoshinobu Yamamoto last December, they face a considerable challenge in that they have never signed a player directly from Japan.

Will that matter to Sasaki? Or is he interested in blazing a trail?

“I have that same question for him,” said Joel Wolfe, Sasaki’s agent. “And I’m interested to see how he feels about whether he would want to be first, or one of the first in a place that hasn’t had a Japanese player in some time.”

Sasaki soon will provide answers. He’s expected to arrive this week in Southern California, according to Wolfe, and could begin notifying teams that he’s interested in hosting them for in-person presentations. Sasaki, who has a 2.02 ERA in 69 starts over four seasons in Japan for the Chiba Lotte Marines, plans to return home for Christmas, then come back to the U.S. for a second round of meetings and perhaps visits to cities before choosing a team. Wolfe said Sasaki likely will sign within the Jan. 15-24 range.

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Wolfe has represented many Japanese pitchers, notably Yu Darvish, Kenta Maeda, Kodai Senga, and Yamamoto. Sasaki’s free agency is unlike theirs. Because he’s younger than 25, he’s classified as an international amateur. So rather than throwing nine-figure offers at him, teams must apply their bonus money to sign him. Teams’ pools range from $5.1 million to $7.55 million. The Phillies have a $6.2 million allotment.

As such, the playing field for Sasaki will be level, with Wolfe expecting to field interest from small- and mid-market teams as well as the usual big spenders. And Sasaki’s decision figures to be even more personal, a referendum on where he wants to play more than how much money he can make.

It’s widely presumed that Sasaki will follow Yamamoto and Shohei Ohtani to the Dodgers. Or he may join Darvish, his mentor and role model, with the Padres. Wolfe pushed back on those assumptions, and even suggested that a smaller market might be better as a “soft landing” for a pitcher whom he said was stung by “unfair” media and fan criticism in Japan for wanting to leave for MLB.

But Wolfe also insisted that his guess about Sasaki’s priorities is as good as, well, yours and mine because it wasn’t clear until the last few weeks that he even would be posted by Chiba Lotte.

“The best I can say is he has paid attention to how teams have done, as far as overall success both this year and in years past,” Wolfe said. “He’s talked to a lot of [American] players that have been on his team [in Japan]. He asks a lot of questions about weather, about comfortability, about pitching development, and just watching what other Japanese players in the major leagues are doing and how they are doing.”

And that’s where the Phillies would seem to be at a disadvantage.

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There’s a long history of Japanese players preferring West Coast teams. Others have signed with the Yankees, Mets, and Red Sox. But the Phillies haven’t broken through. As recently as 2021, they had only one full-time scout based in Japan.

Over the last few years, Dombrowski charged assistant general manager Jorge Velandia with expanding the Phillies’ presence in the Pacific Rim. But it isn’t an overnight process. It takes years to build relationships to attract top talent from Nippon Professional Baseball, especially because Philadelphia isn’t a destination city, compared to L.A. or New York.

“When we supply information to our Japanese players long before they come over here, one of the things that we provide for them is direct flights from Japan and the amount of time it takes for your family to come and visit you,” Wolfe said. “Five or 10 years ago, that was something that maybe they weighed a little bit more. But now you can fly direct from Japan to most of the major cities in the U.S.”

Philadelphia isn’t one of them.

Even so, the Phillies pushed hard with Yamamoto. They met with him last Dec. 14 and made a presentation that included a video from Bryce Harper. But Yamamoto declined to visit Philly a week later as part of a trip to meet with the Yankees in New York and dine with Mets owner Steve Cohen in Connecticut before choosing the bright lights and geographic advantage of Los Angeles.

So, if a $300-plus million offer didn’t work in the Yamamoto pursuit, how can the Phillies lure Sasaki when money is less of a factor, assuming he even wants to meet with them?

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Maybe they can sell him on being the club’s first Japanese star. Or maybe they could call in a favor from Tadahito Iguchi, Chiba Lotte’s former manager who briefly played for the Phillies in 2007-08.

“Some of our personnel think it’s an advantage to not have signed somebody [from Japan] because they say, ‘You can be the first person. If you’re part of a quality ballclub, you can be the person,’” Dombrowski said. “There’s other people that look at it the other way and say, ‘Well, it’s not as advantageous to us because we don’t have a Japanese player on our team.’

“I do feel we’ve made inroads. We continue to grow and scout there and send our personnel there. I think we’re much more well-known there than we’ve been in the past, but, unfortunately, it hasn’t translated into signing somebody.”

Maybe Sasaki will be the one.

“Anyone that knows Roki Sasaki, this is one of the most driven, intense players I’ve ever known and been around,” Wolfe said. “Incredibly hardworking. I think he’ll be just fine wherever he goes, whether he has a Japanese [teammate] or not.”