Everyone hoping for a decision by Roki Sasaki is going to have wait until 2025.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said the Japanese phenom is expected to be part of next year's international signing class, rather than the current one that ends on Dec. 15, according to The Athletic's Evan Drellich.
The decision was widely expected, as waiting until 2025 will carry significant financial benefits for both Sasaki and his current team, the Chiba Lotte Marines.
The Marines announced last week they would post Sasaki this offseason, but the timing of the posting is significant. Had Sasaki been posted before Dec. 1, he would have had to be part of the class of 2024. That's because players have only 45 days to negotiate teams after they're posted and teams can't sign players between Dec. 15 and Jan. 15.
Because Sasaki is younger than 23, he is not eligible for the kind of deals his countryman Yoshinobu Yamamoto signed last year. Instead, he is limited to the international bonus pools which are typically used to sign Latin American amateurs.
Many teams have already drained those pools with signings from earlier in the year. The Tampa Bay Rays and Texas Rangers have literally zero dollars left, while the San Diego Padres, who are seen as a significant contender for Sasaki, have a grand total of $2,200. The Los Angeles Dodgers are favored to land Sasaki and have the most remaining 2024 money with $2.5 million, but Sasaki more than doubles his earning power just by waiting a few weeks.
The international bonus pools reset when the new signing period starts in 2025, with every team having between $5 million and $8 million. So Sasaki gets more money by waiting, and that matters to the Marines because the posting fee they get will be 20% of his signing bonus.
To be clear, the difference of a few million dollars likely doesn't matter much to Sasaki. He arguably lit a nine-figure amount of money on fire by coming to the United States this offseason rather than two years from now, so there's no way his choice comes down to one team offering a few hundred thousand dollars more than the others.
Instead, Sasaki's decision will likely depend on which team he thinks can give him the best career in MLB. That could mean which team is the most likely to develop him into an ace, or most likely to win a World Series, or provide the most comfortable situation in the locker room and community, or something else. Every team will want to sign Sasaki because he's a potential ace available for "one year of a fifth starter" money, but it's all ultimately up to the player himself.
Unfortunately, while there is little reason for Sasaki to not wait, there are some other people who could receive collateral damage.
Remember how those international bonus pools are used to sign Latin American teenagers?
Well, that is still true in 2025. And that means there are some families in the Dominican Republic and other countries who might have something to worry about.
The way the international signing system is supposed to work is players become amateur free agents if they turn 16 by Sept. 1 of a given year. They are then eligible to sign with teams and formally start their professional career.
The reality of the system is nowhere close to those rules. Players might hit free agency the year they turn 16, but their futures are often decided years earlier, when their representatives enter into under-the-table agreements for them to sign with a specific team. Once those agreements are made, the players will spend the rest of their pre-free agency years in the team's academy, learning baseball under their future organization's eye while awaiting a future-changing payday. Calling this an open secret is an understatement.
The problem is those agreements aren't binding. And if a team finds a better use for that money -- like, say, a Japanese flamethrower who has dominated the second-best league in the world -- they can just not sign that player with few repercussions.
So if the Dodgers, Padres or some other team sign Sasaki with the majority, or even the totality, of their bonus pools, odds are a bunch of kids will have just lost their payday. Finding another team would be hard, because of how many of these deals are done in advance. So their choice is either take far less money than promised or wait a year and hope the money actually comes through this time.
That's not Sasaki's fault, but it is an unpleasant side effect of his foray into a flawed system.