Because he is enormously talented, Roki Sasaki(s abandoning Japan’s major leagues for America’s has unleashed a flood of observations from both Japan and the United States.
While these observations tell us precious little about the 24-year-old pitcher himself, they do tell us a whole lot about America and Japan, how attitudes and expectations differ, and how both societies encourage us to overlook the value of individual choice.
Prelude: Baseball stuff
Because people ask me, I can tell you a few things about how Roki Sasaki pitched in 2024 In terms of how each pitch affected opponents’ run expectation and adjusted for his team’s offensive context.
- His fastball was more effective than it has ever been, even if his velocity was down, and he got fewer swings and misses and foul strikes.
- His slider was more effective than his splitter this year as he mastered a slower (sweeper) with more glove-side break.
- The split that had been one of the most effective thrown in Japan in 2022 and 2023, was not elite in 2024, with Japan’s best split this year thrown by a pitcher who should be available to MLB teams after the 2026 season – Carter Stewart Jr.
Sasaki throws extremely hard with an almost effortless-looking delivery, and has had trouble maintaining his place in a once-a-week six-pitcher starting rotation for more than about six weeks at a time. All that was known.
But what Sasaki’s posting has really done is give us a refresher course on how many in Japan and America see not only baseball through the lens of their cultural perspective but also how they judge an individual’s actions.
Different worlds
Sasaki’s move to MLB means different things in Japan and the United States.
In the U.S. it means a veteran of four major league seasons will miraculously become–to those unaccustomed to a world where everything is not all about America–a first-year major leaguer. In Japan, it is seen as a sign that the world respects Japanese pro baseball–even if that respect is just MLB’s coveting players under contract with Japan’s major league teams.
His posting reminded me that more than in Japan, the amount of money a player can sign for, and how much value a team can acquire per dollar spent on each player are issues that interest American fans, as if these values are a competition whose winners and losers are important.
A big question in America seems to be how much can Sasaki be acquired for, how much will he be giving up by moving at the age of 23 instead of 25, and which team has the edge in signing him because it might have $100,000 more left in its signing bonus pool, or which team makes the most sense for him from the standpoint of endorsement fees.
I guarantee you Sasaki could make more money in Japan the next two years than he will be able to in MLB even with endorsements, but that doesn’t seem to register with those trying to calculate players’ decisions through the lens of a spreadsheet.
Sasaki is probably not the first
Eleven years ago, the Rakuten Eagles were screwed out of a huge posting-fee payoff when MLB was able to negotiate a change to the original posting system that had landed the Seibu Lions and Nippon Ham Fighters each more than $50 million for Daisuke Matsuzaka and Yu Darvish. Weeks before Masahiro Tanaka’s negotiating rights in the existing closed-bid system were expected to approach $100 million, MLB capped the fee at $20 million.
I tweeted at the time that MLB and Japan needed a transfer system like football has around the world. Players under contract can move when their team agrees to the offer of a transfer fee and the player agrees to a contract with his new team. This was met by incredulous fans, who did not understand why MLB teams should have any obligation to pay overseas teams anything for their players – as most MLB teams had done when pirating Negro League stars.
Other American fans could not understand why teams would even post their best players in the first place, because that’s not how it’s done in MLB, where teams don’t just forfeit control of their stars.
The idea that everything revolves around either money or control makes Japanese teams’ decisions seem alien to many people in America. Under the current posting system, where teams get a posting fee worth a fraction of a player’s contract, it makes a little more sense, but seven years ago, the Nippon Ham Fighters surrendered Shohei Ohtani, now arguably the world’s best player, for $20 million, when they had three more years of team control.
Of course, Nippon Ham most likely was contractually obligated to do post Ohtani and Darvish before him by NPB rules that allow for supplemental contracts, explained in “Roki Sasaki’s unprecedented situation.” The Eagles, too, were probably in a similar bind with Masahiro Tanaka.
In each of these cases, nothing more was admitted to than a gentleman’s agreement to post the player at “some time in the future,” and nothing ever will be because it would be bad for everyone.
The knowledge that a teenager with no pro experience can manipulate the system to his own ends would be celebrated in America as a master stroke, but it would be a public relations disaster in Japan. Here, a degree of self-abasement is demanded of newcomers to an organization, which in turn is required to assume the façade of a benevolent but unchallenged paternal authority.
This is why, when asked about whether the Marines had an agreement to post their top star since they were giving him away and getting virtually nothing in return, the team made shit up like crazy, “Marines: Altruism behind Sasaki posting.”
Not every player is like Sasaki
Yet, teams do post their top stars, even those whose modest profiles as amateurs likely preclude them from making any demands like Sasaki most certainly did. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, for example, was a fourth-round draft pick, and one of the most valuable pitchers in the history of Japanese pro ball.
Munetaka Murakami, who was not a marquee amateur, but who in 2022 produced one of Japan’s most impressive offensive seasons as a 22-year-old for the Yakult Swallows, is headed for MLB at the end of the 2025 season. Instead of rewarding him the minimum pre-arb salary an MLB team would, the Swallows offered the youngster a huge three-year deal and a public promise to post him.
This would make zero sense in America, but it is, for the most part, how Japan rolls.
Perhaps it’s an overly simplistic notion, but Japanese pro baseball reflects the demands of Japanese culture and society, where companies go to some length to pretend they care about employees and to some degree, in top managements’ minds, actually do.
But while most companies treat the hired staff like shit provided they spend on an annual company trip to a hot spring, or encourage cultural activities for workers,
baseball teams cater to the public eye, and are thus extremely sensitive to allegations of immoral treatment of their players.
In fact, for 11 of the 12 teams’ parent companies, the value of owning a pro baseball franchise is its very public face, rather than the idea of investing in talent and making a profit from promoting games. The lone exception is the SoftBank Hawks, whose owner, Masayoshi Son, has a strict no-posting policy as he aims to build a world-class team within a pro baseball establishment that is content to be second rate: “NPB in a more perfect world.”
Seniority has its privileges
Within Japanese social and work groups, making mistakes, speaking out of turn or acting in an unorthodox fashion–even if one is right and to do so and it profits the group–is considered wrong, and is subject to criticism and abuse from one’s colleagues.
In Japanese culture, seniority confers a right to abuse those lower in the pecking order, and players learn from an early age in youth ball to mind their manners. In fact, instilling manners, a respect for authority and a solid work ethic is what youth ball aims to achieve, and is considered by most professional ballplayers to be the cornerstone of everything good about Japanese baseball.
If one goes past a high school practice field and players in uniform walk by, they will most likely doff their caps, bow their heads and issue a polite greetings–especially if there is any chance that not doing so might be observed by an upper classman with a license to beat the crap out of them for their oversight.
At a typical game, when the national anthem is played, some reporters in the press box stand and some ignore it while continuing to go about their business. One night when the late Hall of Fame catcher and manager Katsuya Nomura was in the Tokyo Dome press box as a media analyst, reporters responded to the national anthem by snapping to attention like Marine recruits.
Because virtually nobody is buying the Marines’ excuse about posting Sasaki because they “respect his sincere effort over five years,” former players are now lining up to rip the youngster a new one for his temerity, both in demanding the agreement we all suspect he has, and forcing the team to post him without contributing more to the club’s success: “Hirooka takes aim at Sasaki, Marines.”
It’s about the man, not the money
This of course brings us to the final point about Sasaki.
Much of what has been written negatively about him in Japan raises the themes of how selfish, mentally, and morally weak he is or how his desire to go to MLB was all about money paid him by shady bad actors. Because that’s how Japan treats those who dare to be different.
I’m sure there are some in Japan who are still angry with former Fighters manager Hideki Kuriyama for damaging the unknown upper ceiling of Shohei Ohtani’s pitching career by allowing him to bat since he was a rookie in 2013.
In the U.S, much of what has been published about Sasaki seeks to identify his MLB landing spot based on whether he can earn 1 percent more in this market vs that one, or whether his posting date will allow him to sign after Jan. 15, when MLB’s next international signing period begins.
Both takes miss the point entirely because they treat individuals as if they are cultural cyphers, bound to act the way society in general says they should–whether that means sacrificing your best interests in order to repay social obligations in Japan, or focusing on the money to the exclusion of all else in America.
I choose to believe that Sasaki is going to MLB, not because he is selfish or is being manipulated, but because he believes it is in the best interest of his becoming the person and the ballplayer he most wants to be. I expect he’ll go to the team he believes has the best answers for the questions his life in baseball poses. Because if it was about the money, he wouldn’t be going.
