MLB investigation reportedly found no evidence of Roki Sasaki-Dodgers handshake deal before he was posted
There has been no shortage of speculation that Roki Sasaki's decision to sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers wasn't the result of a meticulous free-agent process, but rather a handshake deal made months or even years earlier.
MLB is doing its best to dispel that notion.
A day after Sasaki announced he was joining the Dodgers, Jack Harris of the Los Angeles Times reported the league had already investigated the matter and came away with no evidence of wrongdoing:
According to a league official, MLB conducted an investigation prior to authorizing Sasaki’s posting to “ensure the protocol agreement had been followed.” Another person with knowledge of the situation, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly, said the league interviewed “numerous parties” in its probe, but found no evidence to substantiate the rumors.
Obviously, that's not going to do anything to placate the Dodgers' biggest critics. Disgraced former MLB general manager Jim Bowden has also claimed multiple teams believe there was a pre-arranged deal.
Sasaki's agent, Joel Wolfe, rejected the idea during the winter meetings in December, via the Times:
“There were some accusations, allegations, all of them false, made about pre-determined deals, things like that,” Wolfe said then. “However, MLB rightly wanted to make sure this was going to be a fair and level playing field for everyone. So they did their due diligence and interviewed numerous parties ahead of time to make sure that was the case. And they wanted to make sure that Roki would most likely — while he would have the opportunity to sign in ‘24 — give himself the best opportunity to get the best deal.”
Sasaki joining the Dodgers has proven to be a flashpoint for broader concerns about parity in MLB, as only one fan base is going to be happy when the defending champions, having already signed no shortage of impact players this offseason, land quite possibly the biggest bargain baseball will see this decade.
Due to an odd intersection between Japanese posting rules and the international free-agent system, Sasaki reportedly received a signing bonus of only $6.5 million, likely less than 5% of what he would have received had he actually hit the open market. The Dodgers were long believed to be the favorites to land him, with the rival San Diego Padres looming as secondary favorites.
MLB didn't fully prove the Sasaki deal was above board, it just found no evidence behind the rumors of impropriety. However, it's not like the Dodgers had to sell Sasaki on them in private, either. The reason L.A. was always presented as the favorite was the team just made sense.
The Dodgers won the World Series last year. They have been in the playoffs every year for the past decade. They have one of, if not the, best player development systems in the business. They already had two Japanese stars in Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto to help Sasaki acclimate. They already had the full attention of Sasaki's home country, not to mention relative proximity. If you're a 23-year-old phenom who knows for a fact that a team will be interested in you, there's not much communication needed.
Still, proving the Dodgers didn't back-channel a deal with Sasaki means proving a negative, which isn't going to happen. There will be gripes — some founded, some not — on how all this went down for the foreseeable future.
