The Dodgers offseason wouldn’t have necessarily been a failure if they had missed on star Japanese pitcher Roki Sasaki.
But by agreeing to sign the 23-year-old star right-hander Friday, the club ensured that it was the envy of the sport for a second straight winter.
Sasaki’s decision to play for the Dodgers, on what will start as a standard minor-league contract with a modest $6.5-million signing bonus, instantly transforms the club’s short- and long-term future.
He will become another cog in their plans to repeat as World Series champions next season. Meanwhile, his exceedingly affordable contract — which Sasaki was limited to because he was coming over from Japan before turning 25 and, therefore, classified as an international amateur — could make him a cost-effective cornerstone for years to come.
Read more: Dodgers to sign Japanese star Roki Sasaki in yet another free-agency victory for L.A.
It’s all part of the reason why the Dodgers had scouted the young flame-thrower so heavily in recent years — why they made signing him a “major priority” this winter, in the words of president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman.
Now that they have, they seem as primed as ever to turn their recent decade-plus of dominance into an all-out dynasty. Here are three takeaways on the impact of Sasaki’s arrival.
An affordable contract
While Sasaki’s tools alone — a triple-digit fastball, wipeout splitter and fluid movements from his 6-foot-4 frame — would have made him a highly coveted free-agent target, the financial constraints he faced turned him into a generational bargain, similar to when Shohei Ohtani (then also 23) first signed with the Angels in December 2017.
Because Sasaki was classified as an international amateur — putting him in the same boat as teenage prospects from Latin America — he could receive only a standard minor-league contract with a signing bonus capped by the amount of money in his new team’s international bonus pool.
The Dodgers had only $5.146 million in their bonus pool, tied for the smallest amount in the league, but made two trades Friday with the Philadelphia Phillies and Cincinnati Reds to acquire more and complete Sasaki’s $6.5 million signing.
That will represent the largest cash outlay the team will owe him for a while.
Once Sasaki is added to the Dodgers major league roster at the start of the season, the team can pay him as little as the league minimum salary his first three seasons. In 2025, that will…