Yahoo Sports senior MLB analyst Jordan Shusterman, senior MLB analyst Jake Mintz and NPB expert Yuri Karasawa discuss Japanese pitching sensation Roki Sasaki’s upcoming transition into Major League Baseball, and debate whether or not he’s being posted too soon. Hear the full conversation on the “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.

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Video Transcript

The team from the outside was not incentivized to post Saki because if they could have waited a number of years, they could have kind of reaped a much bigger reward from his talents on the open market because the posting fee that they would have been paid by an MLB team, that number likely would have been significantly higher.

And from Sasaki's point of view, he could have not thrown a baseball for two years and he probably would have gotten a higher dollar figure than what he will end up getting.

So the team is not incentivized and he, from a financial perspective is not incentivized.

So why is he almost certainly going to be posted?

It just seems like this has been his desire from the get go because he had MLB interest both in terms of scouts watching him, the bo you know, him wanting to play overseas since he was a teenager.

And so the team would like to present this as a case of, hey, we're doing this out of the goodness of our hearts to let him follow his dreams.

But the most likely scenario is that Sasaki and his agent were able to get a clause built into his contract when he was first drafted.

The reason being the leverage is completely on the side of the player.

Um at the time of the draft, you know, in later years, in arbitration process, especially in MP D with the players union being so weak, the leverage is on the team side.

But Sasaki, when he's drafted in 2019 can effectively tell the team, hey, unless you agree to post me early, I'm just not gonna join your team.

I'm gonna wait, sit out a year and re enter the draft the next year and, and you know, go to a team that will actually agree to this or maybe I'll just take my talents to the US play, you know, college, uh sign a minor league deal right away.

The team effectively gets pushed into a corner there where they have to choose like, ok, do we agree to get him for, you know, a shortened period of time?

Only five years or so?

Um But we're going to be able to have this amazing raw talent to see if we can win now, um or do we like stick to our principles and say, hey, you can't really bully us into doing this.

Uh but he's not gonna join your team at that point.

So that's likely what happened.

We're never gonna know the actual details of the contract unfortunately, but that seems to be the case is that the Lotte Marines, they had their hands forced in terms of Roki Sasaki had asked for an early posting when he first joined the team and they are now honoring that agreement.

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