With several teams having pitchers and catchers report down to Spring Training, Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki has arrived at the Dodgers Spring Training facility.
Sasaki, 23, signed a deal to join the Los Angeles Dodgers on January 22. He signed for a $6.5 million signing bonus. Due to Sasaki being under 25-years-old, regulations required that he had to sign a minor league contract. Currently, he is ranked as the number one overall prospect in baseball.
Before heading to the United States, Sasaki was a member of the Chiba Lotte Marines of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). He spent 2021-2024 pitching there, where he would make 64 starts, going 29-15, posting a career 2.10 ERA, striking out 505 batters and walking 88 across 394.2 innings. During his time with the Marines, he threw a perfect game on April 10, 2022, finished as a two-time NPB All-Star, and holds the single game strikeout record in NPB, punching out 19 batters in a game.
Now, Sasaki will look to make the Dodgers roster out of Spring Training to join the likes of his friends Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shohei Ohtani in the Dodgers starting rotation. It will be intriguing to see whether the Dodgers decide to start Sasaki at the Triple-A level, or if he will perform well enough in Spring Training to open the year with the big league club.
