Warning to the Los Angeles Dodgers: You assumed a special responsibility Friday when you signed Japanese free-agent right-hander Roki Sasaki. Don’t break him.
Pitching injuries are an industry-wide problem. Often, they are beyond a team’s control. But the Dodgers ordered an offseason autopsy of their pitching development to figure out why so many of their pitchers get hurt.
Sasaki, 23, will be their most important test case.
As one rival executive put it, “The next six years probably are more important for Roki Sasaki to stay healthy than anybody in baseball.”
The executive, granted anonymity for his candor, was referring to Sasaki leaving Japan two years before he could become an unrestricted free agent, at a sacrifice of perhaps $200 million to $300 million.
The Dodgers are getting Sasaki practically for free, relative to other players with his talent. Even after trading with the Philadelphia Phillies for international bonus pool space to boost his minor-league contract to $6.5 million. Sasaki still will be at less than 1 percent of the total value of Shohei Ohtani’s heavily deferred 10-year, $700 million deal.
Such are the spending restrictions under baseball’s international signing system, but weep not for Sasaki, who is certain to line up enough marketing and endorsement opportunities to live quite comfortably. He wanted to play Major League Baseball. And now he is joining a club that stands a decent chance of becoming the first team since the 1998-2000 New York Yankees to win back-to-back World Series titles.
It’s obviously in the Dodgers’ interests to keep Sasaki healthy. With so many high-level starting pitchers on their roster, they might be better positioned than any club to accommodate him with a six-man rotation. But this is a team that last season placed 12 starting pitchers on the injured list – and a team that acknowledges its shortcomings when it comes to pitcher health.
“We need to be very thoughtful about studying this more, and understanding things more, and appreciating what we know, what we don’t know, and just reimagining everything to try to put ourselves in a better position, especially relative to the industry going forward,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said in September.
For all that, the Dodgers’ sheer depth in starting pitching was perhaps their principal selling point to Sasaki. Shohei Ohtani will return from injury to pitch again in 2025. So will Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin. The Dodgers added Tyler Glasnow and Yoshinobu Yamamoto last offseason and Blake Snell this offseason. Oh, and they eventually figure to bring back Clayton Kershaw, too.
All of those pitchers will need to be protected in one form or another; even Snell, perhaps the most durable of the bunch, has never thrown more than 180 2/3 innings in a season. The way to offer such protection is through a six-man rotation, even though going with an extra starter adds pressure on the bullpen. With teams permitted to carry a maximum of 13 pitchers, one bad start can wreak havoc on a seven-man ‘pen.
The Dodgers, though, planned to go with a six-man rotation with or without Sasaki. They see his transition, at least from that perspective, as potentially seamless. Sasaki, of course, will deal with other challenges coming from Japan – a new ball, new city, new culture and more. But he can lean on his fellow countrymen, Ohtani and Yamamoto. He also can assume a relatively low profile on the team’s star-studded roster – no small thing, perhaps, for a pitcher who is said to be quiet and reserved, less than comfortable in the limelight.
The San Diego Padres, short on starting pitchers, might have found it more difficult to build in extra rest for Sasaki. The Toronto Blue Jays’ rotation is deeper. But considering the importance they are placing on this season, they might have felt pressure to pitch Sasaki as often as possible if they found themselves in a pennant race in September.
Sasaki had other reasons to ultimately decide against those clubs. The uncertain state of the Padres’ ownership, with the late Peter Seidler’s widow, Sheel Seidler, suing two of her brothers-in-law. The uncertain state of the Blue Jays’ front office, with general manager Ross Atkins under contract for only two more years and team president Mark Shapiro for one. And the uncertain state of the Jays’ roster, with first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and shortstop Bo Bichette entering their walk years.
For two years, though, the Dodgers have been favored to land Sasaki. And while some rival officials are certain to grumble the outcome was all but predetermined, the Dodgers are the envy of baseball not only because they are filthy rich, but also because they are among the most advanced organizations in the game.
Glasnow told Sasaki as much.
“I talked to him on the phone. We have the same agent,” Glasnow said this week on “Foul Territory.” “I was kind of being like, ‘You should come to the Dodgers.’ I mentioned, too,. . . I haven’t played for the other two organizations. But if one of your main goals is to become the best pitcher you can possibly be, development-wise, scouting-report-wise, all that stuff, this is the place for you. If your motivation is money or winning or whatever, I think this is the best place to grow as a baseball player.”
About the only thing the Dodgers don’t do well is keep pitchers upright. Glasnow had a lengthy injury history before joining the team. Kershaw has pitched nearly 3,000 innings, including postseason. But the list of other homegrown Dodgers pitchers who have undergone major arm surgeries in recent years includes May, Gonsolin, Walker Buehler, Gavin Stone, River Ryan and Emmett Sheehan.
Some of it might be bad luck. Some of it also might be due to an emphasis on stuff and velocity. The Dodgers hardly are the only club asking pitchers to max out. But in June 2023, Baseball America reported that the hardest-throwing staff in baseball belonged not to a major-league club, but the Dodgers’ Double-A affiliate in Tulsa. Four of that team’s six starters – Ryan, Sheehan, Nick Fasso and Kyle Hurt – since have undergone major arm surgeries.
Friedman talked in September about the need for improvement. The addition of Sasaki only increases the urgency for the Dodgers to do better. They’re getting the baseball equivalent of an uncut diamond for a minimal price. They need to handle it with the utmost care.
(Top photo of Roki Sasaki: Christopher Pasatieri/Getty Images)
