The Case Against Roki Sasaki Signing With The Dodgers

Image credit: Roki Sasaki (Photo by Jasen Vinlove/Miami Marlins/Getty Images)

The Dodgers are considered the favorites to land Roki Sasaki when he is posted to come to the U.S.

It makes plenty of sense. Picking the Dodgers would ensure that Sasaki plays for a team that should contend for World Series titles each and every year. Los Angeles has won the NL West 11 of the past 12 seasons. They last had a losing record in 2010. They have made the League Championship Series nine times in the past 20 seasons.

The Dodgers are exceptional at player development, analytics, scouting, sports performance and almost any other aspect of baseball you can name. They have a payroll where they can make moves that most teams don’t even consider. Every year, whether they win the World Series or fall short, the Dodgers enter the offseason with a mandate to try to be even better for the next season.

All of those are impressive and enviable traits for an organization. And that is why as a fan of baseball in general, I hope that Sasaki ends up playing for someone other than the Dodgers.

It’s not because of any lingering Dodgers’ hate. As the previous two paragraphs lay out, the exceptionally well-run Dodgers are worthy of acclaim.

It’s not because he isn’t a good fit with the Dodgers. He is.

It’s because the Dodgers don’t need Sasaki. And baseball needs Sasaki elsewhere.

If he joins Los Angeles, he becomes yet another big addition to a team that already has the sport’s biggest star (Shohei Ohtani), another pair of MVPs (Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman), a Japanese frontline starter (Yoshinobu Yamamoto) and one of the better farm systems in baseball.

If Sasaki signs with any of 20+ other teams, he transforms their outlook.

The Latest On Roki Sasaki:

In baseball no one player can carry a team to the playoffs, as Ohtani and Mike Trout showed with the Angels. But adding a young, exciting star can transform a team and how it’s perceived by its fan base. The Reds averaged 17,500 fans per game in 2022. Elly De La Cruz arrived in 2023, the team got better and they’ve averaged 25,000 fans per game in 2023 and 2024.

You can see how much Paul Skenes’ arrival boosted the Pirates. Pittsburgh drew roughly 4,000 more fans per home game that Skenes pitched compared to games where he didn’t pitch.

Sasaki may not be able to match Skenes’ debut, but he would provide a massive offseason bump to any team he chose. And because he’s coming over while subject to international signing bonus pool rules, he’ll be signing at a price that all 30 MLB teams can easily afford.

And that’s the other reason that a Sasaki-Dodgers’ pairing isn’t ideal for the sport. We’re in an age where the separation between the large revenue and small revenue teams is growing. The Dodgers have a $320 million a year local TV contract that hasn’t (as of yet) been affected by the ever-increasing cord-cutting trends. The Red Sox, Yankees, Mets and other large revenue teams also have avoided the problems many MLB teams are facing where their local TV revenue is either declining dramatically or facing an uncertain future.

Some teams have seen their $50-70 million local TV contracts thrown into question. They don’t know how much money they’ll make in 2025, so they are likely to scale back on payroll.

The Dodgers landing an exceptional young star like Sasaki is like Warren Buffet winning the lottery. What do you get for the team that already has everything?

It’s unlikely that we’ll see Sasaki wearing a Pirates, Nationals or Rockies’ hat in 2025. But for baseball, it would be great to see him end up at somewhere a little less expected than Dodgers Stadium.