Roki Sasaki is leaving the building, or rather what the Lotte Marines portrayed Saturday as a shining city on a hill of human kindness.
The Lotte Marines announced that they will post the hard-throwing right-handed pitcher two years before it makes financial sense for the team to do so, out of the kindness of their hearts.
It almost brings a tear to your eye.
Speaking to reporters a few hours after the team announced the news on its website, senior executive Naoki Matsumoto said the decision was based purely on the sincere desire to go to MLB that Sasaki had expressed in his five years with the team.
Asked bluntly if Sasaki had a prior agreement to be posted with the team from when he turned pro in 2019, Matsumoto said no such agreement existed.
“I’ve talked to him every year since he joined the team,” Matsumoto said. “It’s a blow to our strength, but I’ve listened to his strong feelings for five years. In the end, we made the decision based on those feelings.”
By moving before the age of 25, Sasaki is limited to signing a standard minor league contract. And though he could conceivably end up signing a huge multi-year MLB deal in 2024, none of that money would be calculated into Lotte’s posting fee.
The posting agreement allows for Japanese clubs whose posted players move on minor league deals to get supplemental posting fees should their players sign MLB contracts, but that only applies to players whose original minor league deals “include major league language.” The CBA, however, restricts international players under the age of 25 from having major league language in their initial contracts.
Matsumoto said the thought of the Marines missing out on scores of millions of dollars never occurred to the team in its deliberation.
“We’ve been talking to him without being conscious of that (financial issue),” Matsumoto said. “He’s a representative of Japan and Lotte, so I want him to do his best on the world stage.”
Teams typically only post players after they have rendered exemplary service over a number of seasons, and even though Sasaki has been one of Japan’s most exciting players, his physical limitations have kept him from racking up enough innings in five years to qualify for a league ERA total. This year, he won 10 games for the first time, but Matsumoto said that did not factor in the team’s decision.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “I think he did a great job this year, but we really made the decision after considering everything over the past five years.”
In those years, Sasaki has pitched one perfect game at the age of 22 when he tied the record for strikeouts in a nine-inning game and set a record for most consecutive strikeouts, and followed that with eight perfect innings in his next start.
Overall, he is 29-15 with three complete games and a 2.10 ERA over 394-2/3 innings with 505 strikeouts.
Asked if letting Sasaki go early would create a situation where other players would expect to be allowed to leave early, Matsumoto admitted it could happen, but avoided saying it would be a problem.
“That’s true, but every year he spoke with confidence,” he said. “The team wants to give him a push.”
In other words, the Marines are simply too kind for their own good, and there is nothing to any belief that Sasaki’s backers had the Lotte’s baseballs in a vice through a contractual obligation.
No, it’s 100 percent about how much they care for their players.
Who knows? The team may move further down this path and begin welcoming American refugees fleeing authoritarianism as Lotte seeks to achieve new heights in human kindness.
All I can say, is how much I really admire these guys. Is it too late to vote for them?
