The grade part of this is the easiest to explain. In news you had to expect, given the Los Angeles Dodgers' hot streak of high-level pursuits, the champs landed a pitcher who might be baseball's top prospect -- one ready to join a big league rotation now -- in Roki Sasaki. And they do so with the same financial commitment as if Sasaki were an internally developed player who recently reached the majors.
In a way, the financial aspect is even rosier than that (from the Dodgers' perspective), as typically with a prospect of this caliber, a team might feel pressure to sign him to an early extension. With Sasaki, there's no such pressure: Any talk of an extension now would be viewed as circumventing the transfer rules. It's almost too good to be true.
However, there are costs beyond Sasaki's extremely team-friendly salary over the next few years. The signing bonus was limited due to the size of the team's international bonus pool, but it's still real money. And there is opportunity cost involved, because now the Dodgers can't sign a larger pool of international prospects. For this international signing period, all the Dodgers' eggs are in the Roki basket.
Obviously, the trade-off is worth it for Los Angeles. Not only does Sasaki further strengthen the powerful Dodgers, but they sidestep the ignominy of seeing him pick their biggest rivals in the San Diego Padres. Perhaps no team needed Sasaki more than San Diego, but it's the Dodgers who come away with one of the most impactful additions of the offseason.
It's possible that in a year or two, we might be looking at Sasaki as a Cy Young candidate. A few things have to be ironed out before that happens -- he's not where Paul Skenes was a year ago, for instance -- but the tools are there for that high-ceiling outlook to come to fruition, and soon.
As for those tools, Sasaki was awarded an 80-grade for his splitter by Baseball America, marking it as one of the top offerings in the sport. When you add Sasaki's capacity for a top-shelf fastball, that's a star-level foundation on those two pitches alone. When he's at his best, the pitches work off each other and can be used against hitters of either handedness. The "at his best" qualifier refers to the differences in his fastball velocity and its movement profile between 2023 and 2024, the latter of which saw him flash at lower levels in both average and maximum velocity.
The difference seemed to translate to the bottom line: Sasaki's strikeout rate dropped from 13.4 per nine innings to 10.5 last season, though his solid walk rate rose a bit. He still posted a 2.35 ERA over 111 innings -- in a league with a 3.04 aggregate ERA -- with a 7.1 strikeout rate. Still, he got fewer swings-and-misses, which matters when we're talking about facing big leaguers.
Sasaki also throws a slider, primarily to righties, and similar to his other offerings, the pitch doesn't feature a high spin rate. That's a good thing for the splitter -- think of the similar nasty offering of Seattle's Logan Gilbert. Sasaki's fastball still seems to have a good amount of movement despite the high-90s velocity, so the spin isn't an obvious issue there. The larger concern is the general lack of spin could inhibit his ability to deepen his arsenal as he matures.
Paradoxically, that minor weakness is almost the exciting part. Sasaki is by no means a finished product. With him joining the Dodgers' vaunted pitching development program, he can continue to push toward his considerable ceiling. But he's also ready to help the Dodgers' rotation in 2025.
In the near term, it will be interesting to see if the Dodgers can help Sasaki sharpen his mechanics and perhaps recover that lost velocity. Even if that happens, they'll eventually want him to diversify his offerings. That process should be made easier because of Sasaki's solid command, which allowed him to compile eye-popping strikeout-to-walk ratios while limiting opponents to three homers over 202 innings the past two seasons, albeit in a league with a low homer rate.
Perhaps most importantly, Sasaki, 23, is on the slender side and might add a little bulk over time, which might add to his durability and ability to shoulder the workload of a true No. 1 starter. The most innings he threw in Japan was 129⅓ in his age-20 season. There is concern about injuries -- he's young, he throws hard and an overreliance on a splitter is always worth considering -- but his arm, in general, has low mileage.
Besides, the Dodgers can be guarded in how they ramp up Sasaki's innings count. They have a deep pool of big league starting candidates and were likely to use a six-man rotation for much or all of the 2025 season given Shohei Ohtani's status coming back from injury rehab.
The contract -- your standard MLB rookie arrangement once the signing bonus and posting fees are completed -- lessens the pressure on the organization in many ways. You don't want to go crazy, but if Sasaki -- who seems to have a healthy penchant for self-improvement -- puts it all together, you can ramp up his innings accordingly. There's no financial downside that would accompany the high-value pact that Sasaki surely would have landed in a truly free marketplace.
To get a sense of what was at stake with Sasaki's decision, at least for the coming season, I ran three sets of simulations. Each considers the outlooks for Sasaki's three reported finalists.
For the Dodgers, the regular-season impact is negligible. Sasaki adds additional certainty but they were already heavy favorites to repeat as National League West champs. The bigger impact comes in defending their World Series title. But the addition of Sasaki further highlights the Dodgers' dominance, especially over their division rivals, who, to an even greater extent, are looking at long odds for a first-place finish.
There isn't anything not to like for Los Angeles. If you consider the signing through the prism of risk/reward, it's an easy A. If you consider it through the prism of moving the needle in the short term, also an A. If you consider it through the prism of making an impact addition without inhibiting your financial flexibility, also an A. If you think of it from the standpoint of giving your fans a unique player and talent who should be incredibly fun to watch, also the easiest of As.
Finally, the last reason for the straight A: Sasaki could have signed with any team, and every team wanted him. He chose the team. That's not just "A" material -- it's a triumph and a validation for a franchise that bolsters its ever-expanding global dominance.