Note: This story first appeared in January, but was pulled when a source who was not speaking off the record asked me to take down because of the unattributed quotes.
While it is easy to guess how Roki Sasaki was able to jump the Lotte Marines’ ship, it is doubtful there will ever be proof since it would make both Sasaki and the Marines look bad, the story of how he got to the Los Angeles Dodgers is far harder to guess, even though everyone and their cousin will tell you they knew it all along.
There were stories in the Japanese media about a deal years ago between Sasaki and Japanese sports marketing powerhouse Dentsu, and that Dentsu, not Sasaki, was the driving force behind his move to the Dodgers.
Contrary to what one intellectually lazy person said on Elon Musk’s Xhole, I never guaranteed Sasaki would go elsewhere, but merely said a close advisor told me it was not set in stone.
I’m beginning to believe, however, that Sasaki’s move may have been set in stone by those closest to him, and this advisor was not informed of this, or that he knew but was told not to breath a word of it. I can’t guess which.
Unlike Lotte giving its blessing to a move that did not benefit the Marines in the least, the Dodgers story has the shape of a possible conspiracy involving actions between a few parties to subvert the normal transfer process.
If something underhanded DID happen, it will eventually become known. That’s because conspiracies are damned difficult to keep secret for long. People know things and talk.
This is the difference between conspiracies and conspiracy theories — which are never solved because there are no actual receipts to reveal, just endless supposition.
One of the Xhole posters who attacked me for taking down the story and the tweets, demanded I spell out the “conspiracy” I said there was no evidence of.
OK. If there was a conspiracy, it would have been between a Japanese sports marketing firm providing the muscle to bully Lotte into a contract that would require the team to post Sasaki before he turns 25, and a few people extremely close to him.
MLB teams are expressly forbidden from contacting players under contract with NPB, KBO, CPBL or LMB teams. Lotte fumed about the Dodgers and Japanese sports marketing firm Dentsu in the autumn of 2022, but had there been any receipts, the Sasaki signing would not have gone forward.
As of yet, there is no evidence of a conspiracy. Something could have happened but we will only know when we know.
Another opinion
On the question of why the Marines let Sasaki go this year instead of 2027 when the team potentially could have raked in $40 million dollars for a transfer, former Nippon Ham Fighters chief executive Toshimasa Shimada said on Feb. 8 that he could not believe Lotte was contractually obligated to do so.
Sure the Marines talked about all Sasaki had done for the team in his five years as a pro, and of his dreams, but in just the four seasons since he first began pitching for Lotte, here is a list of Japanese players who have contributed more than him to Marines victories:
- Shogo Nakamura
- Takashi Ogino
- Yudai Fujioka
- Hisanori Yasuda
- Hiromi Oka
- Naoya Masuda
- Kazuya Ojima
- Koki Yamaguchi
- Kyota Fujiwara
OK, so Ogino, and Nakamura are on the downward slide, and if Masuda wanted to go to MLB, Lotte would probably let him, but I doubt the Marines would let Fujioka, Ojima, Yamaguchi or Fujiwara go just because they said, “Come on guys. It’s my dream!”
Shimada suggested that if there was an agreement to let Sasaki go early, it would have been a verbal promise. But having negotiated with Japanese companies as a labor union executive for the past 25 years, I can tell you their verbal promises are generally worth less than the paper they aren’t printed on.
In September 2004 when Japan’s players union forced the labor settlement that crushed the owners’ plans to contract NPB following the merger of the Pacific League’s Orix BlueWave and Kintetsu Buffaloes, the Orix owner, Yoshihiko MIyauchi, announced at the press conference that Orix would not force any Kintetsu player to join the merged club.
Unfortunately, when Kintetsu ace Hisashi Iwakuma wanted no part of an Orix uniform, the club said, “You can’t expect us to keep our promise when it comes to a player of his quality.” Iwakuma refused to move and eventually was sold to the Rakuten Eagles. So much for verbal promises.
Unlike in MLB, where every contract between a player and a team must be vetted by both the commissioner’s office and the players union, these side deals have no such oversight.
These contracts are the ones that allow for multiyear deals. Every import player with an agent who signs an NPB contract has a contract stipulating when he will be free to move. Although Shimada believes it can’t have happened, there is no rule preventing amateurs from strong-arming teams into agreeing to similar terms as a condition of their turning pro.
