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Los Angeles Dodgers
With Japanese righty Roki Sasaki’s eventual bonus coming out of the 2025 international free-agent budget, pretty much every team can pay him the same amount of money. The actual rules governing the pools are complicated, tied to Bud’s Bonus draft picks, but the long story short is the difference in available bonus money is unlikely to be a factor in Sasaki’s decision. He’s going to pick based on where he wants to play and who he wants to play with.
The Dodgers would seem to have a lot of advantages, then. They’re already lining up a six-man rotation for next year with Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shohei Ohtani. With two Japanese stars on the roster, there’s an infrastructure in place for integrating another one, and organizational experience with how to best make Sasaki’s transition an easy one. The Dodgers are the best team in baseball and the closest thing to a guaranteed playoff team. Sasaki would be asked to be an ace for a lot of other teams; here, he could be the #3 or even #4 starter.
After last year’s outcry over Shohei Ohtani’s contract, in which the player deferred most of his salary for ten years to ease the burden on the team’s payroll, it would be hilarious to see the Dodgers now add a potential frontline starter for $5 million in bonus money and the minimum salary. Ohtani made $1.9 million in his first three seasons in the majors, then $8.5 million for his next two combined. Ohtani’s elbow surgery in 2018 and poor pandemic season in 2020 tamped down his pay, but Sasaki’s compensation will likely follow a similar path. The Dodger wouldn’t be buying talent in this case, but they would be leveraging their success, and their investments in Yamamoto and Ohtani, to add another potential superstar.
I’m sure they’ll try to make a rule stopping that soon, too.