The Blue Jays are a potential landing spot for Rōki Sasaki according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan

One of the best pitchers in baseball will be available soon.

On Saturday morning, the Chiba Lotte Marines announced they’ll post 23-year-old righty Rōki Sasaki this off-season. Due to his age, Sasaki will be signed as an international free agent (it’s unclear if it’ll be in the 2024 or 2025 class), meaning that all 30 teams in Major League Baseball have the finances to sign him to a minor league deal.

Of course, there are favourites to sign the right-handed pitcher. The reigning World Series champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers, are seen as the heavy favourites to sign Sasaki. Part of that is due to them having the most remaining international free agent bonus pool for the 2024 class. Still, they also have two Japanese superstars Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who were teammates with Sasaki in the 2023 World Baseball Classic.

As you can imagine, the Blue Jays are also linked to the 25-year-old as they tend to be with all big-name free agents. In an article released for ESPN in the wee hours of Saturday morning, Jeff Passan listed the Jays as one of seven other teams that could land the pitcher due to the city being a large international hub. The other teams listed were the San Diego Padres, the New York Mets and Yankees, the Chicago Cubs, the Texas Ranger, and the Tampa Bay Rays.

Any Japanese player who is posted under the age of 25 (Sasaki just turned 23) is signed as an international free agent, meaning there is a certain limit to how much they can sign for. A big determining factor is when Sasaki will be posted. As it stands, the Blue Jays don’t have a ton of bonus pool remaining, about $154,000 according to Avery Chenier of Gate 14, while the Dodgers have the most money ($2.5 million) remaining for this period.