Dodgers’ meeting with Roki Sasaki didn’t include in-person pitches from Ohtani or Yamamoto

Neither Shohei Ohtani nor Yoshinobu Yamamoto were part of the Dodgers’ initial in-person pitch to Japanese pitching star Roki Sasaki, a meeting that took place at the Westwood offices of the Wasserman Media Group before the holidays, according to people with knowledge of the situation not authorized to speak publicly about it.

The reason for their absence? They weren’t invited.

“One of the criteria for the meetings is that Roki asked that no players were to attend,” Joel Wolfe, the agent representing the 23-year-old right-hander, said in a 20-minute video call with reporters to update Sasaki negotiations on Monday.

“There were a couple of teams that had a video from one or two players, but for the most part, it was the general manager, possibly an assistant GM, the manager, the pitching coach and people from the bio-mechanics performance and training staff.”

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Wolfe would not say how many teams met with Sasaki in recent weeks, but five other clubs — the New York Yankees, New York Mets, Chicago Cubs, Texas Rangers and San Francisco Giants — are publicly known to have met with him, and the San Diego Padres are seen as leading contenders for his services.

Meetings were limited to two hours in length and held at Wolfe’s office. There were no stadium visits or trips to other cities.

“I think he did that to preserve the integrity of the meeting process,” Wolfe said. “And I think the teams he met would tell you that he was engaged, he asked questions.”

Wolfe said Sasaki has returned to Japan to “meet with his family and his team of people to decide what the next steps are … possibly meeting with one or two additional teams or narrowing the field, which I think may be more likely.”

Sasaki, Wolfe said, might also “visit one or two cities as he tries to finalize his decision,” which will likely be made in the week after the 2025 international signing period opens on Jan. 15.

While Monday’s call was short on details, it did shed some light on the recruiting process and provide some insight into the pitcher.

After Sasaki was posted by the Chiba Lotte Marines on Dec. 9, Wolfe sent a letter to all 30 teams asking to send “any type of information that they wanted Roki to review.”

Twenty teams responded, many with glitzy presentations.

“The level of preparation, the videos … it was like the Roki film festival,” Wolfe said. “There were in-depth power-point presentations, short films, some teams made actual books. People clearly spent hundreds of hours researching Roki and his personal and professional background, and I can’t say how much he and his family appreciated it.”

Sasaski also gave each team he met with a “homework assignment,” Wolfe said, “an opportunity for the teams to really show what they specialize in.”

The Dodgers, who beat the New York Yankees in a five-game World Series in October, have long been seen as favorites to land Sasaki, but if Sasaki ends up in Los Angeles, it won’t necessarily be because of the presence of Ohtani and Yamamoto, who were teammates of Sasaki on Japan’s World Baseball Classic-winning team in 2023.

“We’ve had numerous conversations about team location, market size, teams’ success … but he doesn’t seem overly concerned about whether a team has Japanese players or not,” Wolfe said. “In the past, as I’ve represented Japanese players, that was sometimes an issue, but it was never a topic of discussion.”

The wiry 6-foot-4, 203-pound Sasaki went 30-15 with a 2.02 ERA in 69 games over four seasons in Japan, striking out 524 and walking 91 in 414 ⅔ innings. He went 10-5 with a 2.35 ERA in 18 games in 2024, with 129 strikeouts and 32 walks in 111 innings.

The highlight of Sasaki’s career was a perfect game against the Orix Buffaloes on April 10, 2022, a game in which he tied a Nippon Professional Baseball record with 19 strikeouts and set an NPB record with 13 consecutive strikeouts.

Sasaki’s stuff is electric. He can generate plenty of swing-and-miss with a lively fastball that sits in the 98-mph range and has touched 102 mph, and he complements his heater with a sharp-breaking split-fingered fastball that he throws between 88-93 mph, an 87-91-mph slider and an occasional 78-81-mph slow curve.

But what makes Sasaki even more coveted is he is a potential ace who can be acquired at minimal cost.

Because he is not yet 25, Sasaki will be restricted to a minor league contract with a modest signing bonus, similar to when Ohtani, then 23, signed with the Angels for $2.315 million and made $545,000 (2018), $650,000 (2019) and $700,000 (2020) in his first three seasons.

Had he waited two more years to leave Japan, Sasaki — like Yamamoto, who signed a 12-year, $325-million contract with the Dodgers last winter — would have positioned himself for a massive nine-figure deal.

“Roki is by no means a finished product — he knows it, and the teams know it,” Wolfe said. “He’s incredibly talented. We all know that. But he is a guy who wants to be great. He’s not coming here just to be rich or to get a huge contract. He wants to be one of the greatest ever. And to be that, he knows he has to challenge himself.

“I think with his experience at the WBC, being around [San Diego pitcher Yu] Darvish and Ohtani, and then seeing [Cubs left-hander Shota] Imanaga come over and dominate at such a level in the first half, he realized that in order to take it to the next level, he had to come here, play against the best players in the world every day and tap into all the resources major league teams have to help him become one of the best pitchers ever, not just to come out of NPB, but in all of Major League Baseball.”

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Sasaki would bolster an already deep Dodgers rotation that is currently headed by right-handers Tyler Glasnow and Yamamoto and left-hander Blake Snell, the two-time Cy Young Award winner who signed a five-year, $182-million deal in late November.

Ohtani, the two-way star and 2024 National League most valuable player who was relegated to designated hitter while recovering from another elbow surgery this past season, is expected to return to the mound early in 2025.

Right-handers Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin are also expected to return from elbow surgeries this season, and three-time Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw is expected to re-sign. Young right-handers Landon Knack and Bobby Miller will provide depth.

“He’s someone who is obviously a major priority for us,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said at the winter meetings in early December. “We’re going to do whatever we can, and know that there are a lot of other teams that are going to do the exact same thing.”

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.