Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers during the offseason after fielding pitches from a host of MLB teams. It was a predictable result, but if you ask some around the league, the road to get there was anything but ordinary.
Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic published a story on Monday that introduced American baseball fans to Dentsu, the Japanese advertising agency that worked closely with Sasaki and his agent, Joel Wolfe, throughout the process. Or, perhaps they ran the process themselves.
“Dentsu had an agenda and it just never felt like we truly fit with whatever that agenda was,” one baseball executive told Rosenthal. “We’re skeptical moving forward when they represent a player.”
“It was hard to get a sense of who was controlling everything . . . of what they actually were valuing,” another added.
The New York Times wrote about the company in 2021 ahead of the Tokyo Olympics, calling it “hard-wired into nearly every major institution in Japan.” Dentsu employs more than 71,000 people around the globe and, while it doesn’t negotiate player contracts, it works directly with players like Sasaki on marketing opportunities.
“There’s no comparison [in the US]. I can’t even give you an analogy,” one MLB official told Rosenthal. “They’re ubiquitous.”
Rival executives alleged that because Dentsu seemed to want Sasaki to sign with the Dodgers, the outcome was “predetermined.”
Roki Sasaki prepares for Major League debut with Dodgers in Japan
It turns out Sasaki’s first Major League start will come in his home country with the Dodgers set to take on the Chicago Cubs in the Tokyo Series. Yoshinobu Yamamoto will get the nod in game one for LA, scheduled for early Tuesday morning. Sasaki gets the ball after that, going up against Chicago starter Justin Steele.
Sasaki had two spring training tuneups in addition to a few bullpen sessions, and the team has liked what it’s seen from the 23-year-old so far. Over seven Cactus League innings, he has yet to give up an earned run and has struck out seven while yielding just three hits.
“Just trying to get him acclimated to, one, the U.S. style of baseball and practices and meetings and different things. … These first couple weeks is really both of us trying to get to know each other, and then try to progress from there,” Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior said in late February about the plan for Sasaki. “Get him dialed in with some things that he wants to work on.”
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