Signing Roki Sasaki Could Land Team An Extra Draft Pick
Image credit: Roki Sasaki (Getty Images)
Whichever team wins the posting battle for Roki Sasaki is going to land a potential frontline starter at a miniscule fraction of his value on the open market.
And a year or two later, they could end up winning an extra draft pick, as well.
While “foreign professionals” are not eligible for Prospect Performance Incentive (PPI) draft picks, Sasaki doesn’t qualify as a “foreign professional” by MLB’s definitions (which require a player be 25 years old with six years of foreign pro league experience).
Because he’s to be treated like an international amateur for signing purposes, he also will be eligible for PPI awards.
If a player who is PPI eligible wins Rookie of the Year or finishes in the top three in MVP or Cy Young voting in any season before he reaches arbitration eligibility, his team receives an extra draft pick at the end of the first round.
To be PPI eligible, Sasaki would have to be rookie eligible next year (check), with less than 60 days of MLB service time (check) and would need to be on an MLB roster long enough to accrue 172 days of MLB service (almost assuredly check).
He would also have to rank in the Top 100 of two of the three of Baseball America, MLB.com and ESPN.com’s Top 100 Prospects lists (maybe check).
This could end up being the trickiest eligibility hurdle for Sasaki. Here at Baseball America, he will be Top 100 Prospect eligible and will assuredly rank in the top 10. We no longer rank “foreign professionals,” but Sasaki is signing an MiLB contract, has zero MLB playing time and is rookie of the year eligible. For our purposes at Baseball America, that makes him prospect eligible.
If MLB.com or ESPN also opt to rank Sasaki, he would meet that requirement.
The PPI rule did not exist when Shohei Ohtani came to the U.S., but if it had, he would have earned the Angels a PPI pick in the 2019 draft when he won AL Rookie of the Year.
There is no guarantee that Sasaki will be rookie of the year in whichever league he ends up, but if he did, he would earn the pick. Even if he didn’t, he could trigger a draft pick award if he finished top three in Cy Young voting in 2025, 2026 or (potentially depending on arbitration eligibility) in 2027. A top three finish in MVP voting would also trigger it, but it’s hard to imagine how a pitcher could finish top three in MVP voting without finishing top three in Cy Young voting.
Before he began working for the MLBPA, Craig Edwards did a calculation of the present value of draft picks. He valued the 30th pick at $10.1 million at that time. With inflation, it’s reasonable to say that the 30th/31st pick would be worth $11-14 million in present value. Even if a team devoted its entire international amateur bonus allotment and traded to add to its bonus pool, it will be limited to spending less than that on signing Sasaki. The teams in the largest bonus pool group would max out at $11.3 million. There is a value to the signing bonus pool, as well, since teams are limited to spending a capped amount of money, but the expected production from Sasaki would be at the very high end of what can ever be projected for an entire international signing class.
So a team signing Sasaki will do so for only a few million dollars, even though he would likely garner a $150 million or larger contract on the open market. And as an added bonus, they could end up landing a draft pick, the value of which would actually be more than how much a team spent to sign Sasaki.
