Roki Sasaki News: Mystery Team Reportedly Met With Dodgers Target

The Roki Sasaki sweepstakes remains the biggest mystery of the offseason. While the Los Angeles Dodgers are one of seven teams known to have met with the Japanese phenom, there is one other club that received the opportunity to impress Sasaki.

MLB insider Jon Morosi believes the unknown club could be the Seattle Mariners, who have a prolific history with Japanese players and a reputation for their pitching development. Joel Wolfe of Wasserman, Sasaki’s agent, recently revealed his client is prioritizing a team’s track record with developing young pitchers as he narrows down his choices.

“We’ve had numerous conversations about team location, market size, team success – things like that,” Wolfe told Bill Plunkett of The Orange County Register. “He doesn’t seem to look at it in the typical way that other players do. He has a more long-term, global view of things. I believe Roki is also very interested in the pitching development and how a team is going to help him get better both in the near future and over the course of his career.”

Along with a reputation of strong pitching development, Seattle has been home to several Japanese players including Ichiro Suzuki, Hisashi Iwakuma, and Yusei Kikuchi. While the Mariners may not have Shohei Ohtani in their lineup, Sasaki isn’t making his final decision based on whether a team has Japanese players on their roster.

“He didn’t seem overly concerned about whether a team had Japanese players on their team or not, which in the past as I’ve represented Japanese players that was sometimes an issue,” Wolfe said.

The Dodgers, along with the unknown club, will be notified if they advanced to the second round of meetings in the Sasaki sweepstakes. The race is expected to come down to the wire as Sasaki will sign in the next international signing period which opens in just a few days on Jan. 15.

“The timeline for Round 2 is going to lead right up until he signs,” Wolfe said, via Will Sammon of The Athletic. “We’re still talking and having Zoom calls. So I don’t have a precise timeline for that, like we did for the meetings. Teams will be notified at some point if there’s going to be additional meetings or travel or something like that. But other than that, I don’t believe there’s going to be any specific timeline.”