Twins aim to meet with Japanese pitcher Roki Sasaki, whose agent suggests a “smaller, midmarket” team might be a good route

DALLAS – If the Twins want to land an ace-caliber pitcher for the next six seasons, with a price tag under $8 million, all they must do is shock the industry and win the fiercest recruiting sweepstakes for a Japanese player since Shohei Ohtani.

Roki Sasaki, a 23-year-old righthander, plans to meet with clubs next week after he formally started his 45-day clock to complete a deal. All teams, theoretically, have a chance to sign him because of his age. If he was 25 years old, he would be in line for a potential $300 million payday. Instead, he is an international free agent who qualifies for only a limited signing bonus and a minor league contract.

It’s reminiscent of Ohtani’s initial foray to MLB when, then 23 years old, he signed with the Los Angeles Angels for $2.3 million.

“We have interest,” Derek Falvey, the Twins' president of baseball operations, said during the winter meetings about Sasaki. “If you’re in one of the rooms in this building and they don’t say that, that would be shocking to me. Obviously, we just want to understand what he’s looking for.”

Sasaki, who helped Japan to a World Baseball Classic title in 2023, features a fastball that peaks above 101 mph, and he throws arguably the most unhittable splitter on the planet. In Japan, he posted a 10-5 record and a 2.35 ERA with 129 strikeouts and 32 walks in 111 innings last season.

He gained fame when he pitched a perfect game in 2022, with 19 strikeouts, then followed it up with eight perfect innings and 14 strikeouts in his next start.

The Los Angeles Dodgers are the favorites to sign Sasaki, with the San Diego Padres considered another possibility, but Joel Wolfe, Sasaki’s agent, suggested Sasaki could be open to a surprise team.

“I think that there’s an argument to be made that a smaller, midmarket team might be more beneficial for him as a soft landing coming from Japan, given what he’s been through and not having an enjoyable experience with the media,” Wolfe said. “I don’t know how he’s going to view it, but it might be beneficial for him to be in a smaller market.”

If the Twins landed a meeting with Sasaki — they are not one of the teams that have already sent Wolfe video and PowerPoint presentations — they are one of the eight teams with the largest international signing bonus pools ($7.56 million) for 2025.

The Twins, who had Japanese pitcher Kenta Maeda in their rotation for three seasons, worked with Sasaki’s team in Japan, Chiba Lotte, to sign infielder Tsuyoshi Nishioka in 2010. Former Twins pitcher Dallas Keuchel was teammates with Sasaki last season.

“He’s talked to a lot of players, foreign players, that have been on his team with Chiba Lotte,” Wolfe said. “He asks a lot of questions about weather, about comfortability, about pitching development. And just watching what other Japanese players in the major leagues are doing and how they are doing.”

It’s been about two months since the Pohlad family announced they were exploring a sale of the Twins, which is being handled by Allen & Company, and all signs point to the process continuing into next summer.

“There is a phase one of the process, which is gathering a ton of information,” Falvey said. “Our lawyers and our finance people, and everyone else who needs to get everything into order, they’ve been working like crazy to get it that way. Then there’s the next phase to the process when potential buyers are starting to look into this. We’re not in that phase yet.”