Dombrowski: Phillies ‘haven’t been invited’ to meet with Roki Sasaki, unlikely to have shot at Japanese phenom

Sasaki was posted to Major League Baseball by his former team in Japan on Dec. 9. The Padres and Dodgers are widely regarded as favorites in the Sasaki sweepstakes.

World-class Japanese pitcher Roki Sasaki was posted to Major League Baseball by his former team in Japan on Dec. 9Read moreèºìcóD / AP

by Scott Lauber

Published Dec. 20, 2024, 7:17 p.m. ET

Sasaki Mania? More like a Sasaki snub.

The Phillies haven’t been asked to make a presentation to world-class pitcher Roki Sasaki, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski conceded Friday, leaving them to presume they didn’t make the list of teams that the Japanese pitching phenom wishes to meet.

“We have not been invited to talk to him at this point,” Dombrowski said. “I’m not making any proclamations because we haven’t been told, but it’s probably running a little bit late if we’re going to be invited to the table. We’ve sent in our original information to him that was requested. They know that we very much would like to have a presentation. But so far we haven’t been invited to the table.”

Sasaki was posted to Major League Baseball by his former team in Japan on Dec. 9. A day later, at baseball’s winter meetings in Dallas, the 23-year-old right-hander’s agent, Joel Wolfe, said Sasaki would begin to short through proposals from interested teams and decide which clubs he wanted to hear from in person.

At the time, Dombrowski said Sasaki and Wolfe “know we’re interested.”

The feeling apparently isn’t mutual. A contingent of Mets officials flew to Southern California this week to woo Sasaki, according to the New York Post, and the Yankees reportedly have a meeting scheduled. The Padres and Dodgers are widely regarded as favorites in the sweepstakes.

But unlike those teams, the Phillies have never signed a player directly from Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, a factor that scuttled their chances to sign prized pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto last winter even though they guaranteed him more than $300 million and made an all-in offer that would’ve topped the Dodgers’ winning $325 million bid.

Sasaki’s decision won’t come down to money. Because he isn’t 25, he’s classified by MLB as an international amateur. Whereas Yamamoto and most other Japanese players are able to sign eight- and nine-figure deals, teams may sign Sasaki only with bonus-pool money, capping his salary at a few million dollars.

It figures, then, that Sasaki received interest from all 30 teams and will prioritize the cities and organizations where he’s going to be most comfortable. With the Dodgers, he could play with Shohei Ohtani and Yamamoto; with the Padres, he would be teammates with Yu Darvish, his pitching mentor. The Mets and Yankees have histories of signing star players from Japan.

Philadelphia? There aren’t even any direct flights to Tokyo.

It’s reminiscent of Ohtani’s initial free agency in the 2017-18 offseason. Like Sasaki, he was treated like an international amateur. And although he said he wanted to visit Philadelphia to see the Rocky statue, he wasn’t interested in playing for the Phillies.

The Phillies have made two offseason moves, signing reliever Jordan Romano and outfielder Max Kepler to one-year contracts. Don’t expect them to do much more. Dombrowski said Friday he “would be surprised if we got into impactful free-agent type of signings from an offensive perspective.”

But the Phillies are still looking for a back-of-the-rotation starter who could also slot into the bullpen. There are several swingmen available in free agency, including Joe Ross, Jakob Junis, and Spencer Turnbull. The Phillies were interested in Junis last winter before he signed with the Brewers. They signed Turnbull instead, and he pitched well mostly as a starter until injuring his shoulder in late June.