Dodgers sign Japanese star Roki Sasaki in yet another free-agency victory for L.A.

For the third time in the last 13 months, the Dodgers are signing a superstar player from Japan.

And this time, it’s coming at a discount, with the club on Friday striking an agreement to sign 23-year-old pitcher Roki Sasaki, according to an announcement posted on Sasaki’s Instagram account.

A hard-throwing right-hander with a tantalizing splitter-slider repertoire, Sasaki was posted last month by his Nippon Professional Baseball league club, the Chiba Lotte Marines, and effectively became eligible to sign on Wednesday, when the 2025 international signing period opened.

Because he is not yet 25, MLB international signing rules limited him to taking a minor-league contract; similar to when Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers’ first marquee Japanese acquisition last December, first signed with the Angels out of Japan for $2.3 million in 2018.

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The situation made Sasaki a prized target for the Dodgers and much of the rest of the majors this winter, adding to the value of a pitcher with a 2.10 career ERA in four NPB seasons. Under his restrictions, Sasaki will be under team control at a minimal salary for six seasons. Given his promise as a budding potential ace, it made him one of the most coveted players on this year’s free-agent market.

Yet, the Dodgers were always seen as his most likely destination. They have a track record of winning, coming off their second World Series in the last five seasons and 11th division title since 2013. They’re renowned for their ability to develop pitchers (a recent trend of pitching-related injuries notwithstanding). And they boast two former Team Japan teammates of Sasaki in Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who signed a 12-year, $325- million deal with the Dodgers last offseason as an unrestricted free agent coming over from Japan.

Had Sasaki waited two more years, he might have been able to rival Yamamoto’s deal — the most ever for a pitcher, excluding Ohtani, in MLB history — simply by waiting to make the move at 25.

However, Sasaki’s career-long dream has been to play in the majors, according to his agent Joel Wolfe of Wasserman Media Group.

And now, he’ll realize it in a Dodgers uniform, beginning with the team’s season-opening trip to Tokyo in March.

The Dodgers didn’t exactly need Sasaki to shore up their World Series defense. After nearly being derailed by pitching problems last postseason, they signed two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell in free agency, are expecting the return of Ohtani, Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May from injuries, and are banking on better health from Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow. Clayton Kershaw is also still expected to re-sign this offseason.

Lacking starting pitching, they were not.

Sasaki, though, gives the team a piece all clubs covet: Elite young pitching talent, on a cost-controlled salary scale.

Sasaki could make as little as the league minimum in his first couple MLB seasons, then earn annual raises through the arbitration process. Over Ohtani’s six seasons in Anaheim, for comparison, the two-way star made less than $40 million total while winning two MVP awards. Sasaki has the potential to be an equally stunning bargain.

Though money wasn’t the main factor in Sasaki’s decision, the Dodgers did have some financial constraints to work around. While they had the most money remaining in their international bonus pool for the 2024 class, Sasaki and his agents (in conjunction with guidance from MLB) decided the pitcher wouldn’t sign until the 2025 period opened Wednesday, in order “to make sure this was going to be a fair and level playing field for everyone,” Wolfe said.

Because of luxury tax-related penalties, the Dodgers’ $5.146 million bonus pool tied for the smallest in the majors, behind some teams with upward of $7.5 million to spend.

Yet, they were among the handful of teams granted a first-round interview with Sasaki at Wasserman’s Southern California offices last month. And this week, while other clubs such as the San Francisco Giants, New York Yankees and New York Mets were informed they were out of the running for Sasaki’s services, the Dodgers were saving their 2025 international bonus pool money.

Several top Latin American prospects expected to sign with the Dodgers ultimately landed elsewhere, after the team communicated to its commits that they would have to wait to sign until the Sasaki sweepstakes had concluded. Meanwhile, the team explored potential trades to acquire more international bonus pool money.

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That made the Dodgers an apparent contender, but they weren’t the only ones.

The Padres had long been seen as the Dodgers’ biggest rival in Sasaki’s free agency. Like the Dodgers, they had a former World Baseball Classic teammate of Sasaki’s in veteran Japanese pitcher Yu Darvish. And despite a recent ownership dispute that led to a lawsuit filed last week, their on-field product remained strong, giving Sasaki another West Coast contender with Japanese ties to consider.

The Toronto Blue Jays also emerged as a finalist in Sasaki’s fee agency. The pitcher held a second round of meetings with each of the Padres, Blue Jays and Dodgers in the last week.

Earlier Friday, speculation around the Blue Jays’ pursuit heated up when they acquired an extra $2 million in bonus pool money from a trade with the Cleveland Guardians; giving Toronto more than $3 million more in bonus pool money to spend on a potential Sasaki signing bonus.

All roads, however, eventually led back to Los Angeles, with Sasaki announcing his decision on Instagram a little after 3 p.m. Pacific time.

The Dodgers’ pitch to Sasaki was strong from several angles. Their newfound popularity in Japan — borne from the signings of Ohtani and Yamamoto, and lucrative in the potential marketing opportunities it provides for players such as Sasaki — didn’t hurt. Nor did their talent-rich roster and track record for helping pitchers develop (their recent trend of pitching injuries notwithstanding).

When the team held its second meeting with Sasaki, as The Athletic first reported, star players were in attendance, underscoring the club’s message as being the premier destination in Major League Baseball. And now, Sasaki will have the chance to immediately compete for World Series, becoming an instant factor in their 2025 title defense.

In Sasaki, the Dodgers will get a 6-foot-3 hurler armed with all the tools needed for big-league success. His fastball has topped out at 102 mph, according to scouting reports, and averages in the upper-90s mph range. His velocity did drop slightly this past season as Sasaki battled what Wolfe termed as shoulder soreness and inflammation. But his stuff was still good enough to post a 2.35 ERA with 129 strikeouts over 111 innings, all while winning 10 games for the first time in his career.

Sasaki’s best two breaking pitches, a late-biting splitter and steadily improving slider, have also enamored scouts during his Japanese career, which included two All-Star selections and a perfect game in 2022. Dodgers evaluators have long rated Sasaki as one of the best pitchers in the world, devoting considerable international scouting efforts to him in recent years.

Sasaki did endure deep personal tragedy in his childhood, when his father and grandparents were killed in a tsunami in 2011 when Sasaki was only 9 years old. That backstory added to the national support and popularity he received in his home country as a young player rising to stardom. But it also increased the spotlight he faced from the nation’s vast array of media and tabloid outlets.

When Sasaki began contemplating his early jump to MLB — a controversial decision to many in Japan, especially for a pitcher who had amassed 100 innings only twice in his NPB career — the public pressures the pitcher faced intensified, according to Wolfe.

“There’s been a lot of negativity in the media directed at him because he has expressed interest at going to play for MLB at such a young age,” Wolfe said. “That’s considered in Japan to be very disrespectful and sort of swimming upstream.”

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Yet, after staying put in Japan amid rumors of a potential posting last offseason, Sasaki’s NPB team, Chiba Lotte, announced in November it would allow him to leave this year.

“From the time he joined the organization, we were told by him of his dream to play in America,” Chiba Lotte’s general manager, Naoki Matsumoto, said in Japanese in a release. “Taking into account the last five years as a whole, we have decided to prioritize his thoughts. We are hoping he does his best as a representative of Japan. We are cheering for him.”

In that same announcement, Sasaki set a new goal for himself too.

“So that I don’t have regrets in my one and only baseball career, and so that I can respond to the expectations of those who gave me a push in the back, I do my best to rise from a minor league contract,” he said, “to become the No. 1 player in the world.”

Those lofty ambitions equal Sasaki’s lofty potential.

And, as they had been hoping for so long, the Dodgers are the team with whom he chose to try to achieve them, putting a celebratory bow on yet another blockbuster offseason.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.