{"id":113344,"date":"2025-06-18T15:48:32","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T15:48:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/113344\/"},"modified":"2025-06-18T15:48:32","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T15:48:32","slug":"mlb-conducted-investigation-prior-to-roki-sasakis-posting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/113344\/","title":{"rendered":"MLB Conducted Investigation Prior To Roki Sasaki’s Posting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prior to the Chiba Lotte Marines of Nippon Professional Baseball officially posting right-hander Roki Sasaki<\/a> for major league clubs last month, Major League Baseball conducted an investigation before authorizing Sasaki\u2019s posting. Jack Harris of The Los Angeles Times<\/a> reported this afternoon that MLB\u2019s investigation was in order to \u201censure the protocol agreement had been followed\u201d and involved interviews with multiple parties. A report from Fabian Ardaya, Dennis Lin, Patrick Mooney, Ken Rosenthal, and Will Sammon of The Athletic<\/a> added more details this evening, noting that the primary focus of the league\u2019s probe was not Sasaki himself but rather the Marines. Both reports emphasize that the league found nothing that substantiated rumors of an illegal arrangement taking place.<\/p>\n

That the league\u2019s investigation focused on the Marines may seem somewhat surprising, but The Athletic\u2019s report notes that the current posting system limits the payout for the Marines to just 25% of Sasaki\u2019s total bonus. That\u2019s a weak financial incentive for a club parting ways with its star player and represents not only a step back from the large posting fees players like Yoshinobu Yamamoto<\/a> and Seiya Suzuki<\/a> have garnered for their clubs in recent years but also the $20MM posting fee the Nippon Ham Fighters were able to charge in exchange for Shohei Ohtani\u2019s<\/a> services when he signed with the Angels as an international amateur under the previous posting system back in December 2017. That relative lack of financial compensation for Sasaki\u2019s services raised concerns among league officials for the potential for an under-the-table payment.<\/p>\n

While MLB\u2019s investigation found no wrongdoing by any party, speculation around the game of the possibility of an handshake agreement between Sasaki and the Dodgers grew significant enough to draw a strong denial<\/a> from agent Joel Wolfe of Wasserman, who represents the right-handed phenom. As described in The Athletic\u2019s report, clubs around the game felt uncertain about Sasaki\u2019s goals throughout his posting process as teams like the Mariners and Red Sox failed to land a meeting with the 23-year-old while large market teams like the Cubs, Yankees, and Mets did in spite of suggestions that he may prefer to avoid the spotlight.<\/p>\n

Regardless of that confusion, it became clear earlier this week that Sasaki had narrowed things down to three finalists<\/a>: the Dodgers, Padres, and Blue Jays, each of whom then visited with Sasaki in their respective cities and began to prepare their offers. According to The Athletic\u2019s report, San Diego told Sasaki\u2019s camp that they would be willing to trade to maximize their bonus pool and offer Sasaki the entirety of those funds while the Dodgers lined up a trade<\/a> with the Phillies to add additional bonus pool money in the event that they landed Sasaki. The Blue Jays were especially aggressive in their pursuit of Sasaki, however.<\/p>\n

While all three clubs were clearly willing to add significant bonus pool dollars in order to land Sasaki, Toronto acquired<\/a> $2MM in international bonus pool space from the Guardians by taking on the majority of the money owed to center fielder Myles Straw<\/a> over the next two years despite not actually having a deal in place with the right-hander. The impetus behind that trade utlimately did not work out for Toronto as Sasaki wound up choosing Los Angeles. Despit that, The Athletic\u2019s report indicates that the Blue Jays believe Straw could be a worthwhile addition in his own right and that the money they took on to land him won\u2019t be prohibitive as they continue to look for ways to upgrade their roster. Notably, center fielder Daulton Varsho<\/a> is not expected<\/a> to be ready for Opening Day and the addition of Straw could give the club some depth at the position while Varsho recovers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prior to the Chiba Lotte Marines of Nippon Professional Baseball officially posting right-hander Roki Sasaki for major league…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2302],"tags":[5,6082,2353,2352,110],"class_list":{"0":"post-113344","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-npb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-myles-straw","10":"tag-nippon-professional-baseball","11":"tag-npb","12":"tag-roki-sasaki"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114705157736313502","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}