MLB free agency: What Roki Sasaki brings to the Los Angeles Dodgers - ESPN

Roki Sasaki is joining the Los Angeles Dodgers!

After the Chiba Lotte Mariners of Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball announced they planned to post their 23-year-old star pitcher in November, he immediately became the No. 2 free agent in my offseason rankings (behind only Juan Soto) with almost every team in baseball hoping to land him. One of the most notable pitchers on the planet since he was a teenager, Sasaki has dominated in Japan's best league — and on the big stage of the World Baseball Classic — since 2021 and now he is headed to Los Angeles.

Just how good is Sasaki and why was he so coveted as a free agent? Let's dig in as a budding ace joins the World Series champs.

He's really, really good — and he isn't even a finished product. Sasaki became famous for throwing 101 mph in high school and then breaking the Japan NPB record with 19 strikeouts in a perfect game when he was 20.

From a stuff perspective, Sasaki ranks near the top of the scale. In the 2023 NPB regular season, his fastball averaged 99 mph with above-average ride/lift and run/tail. His best off-speed pitch is a devastating splitter that is one of the best in the world. Because his splitter doesn't have the heavy arm-side run of most, he can use it effectively against both right- and left-handed hitters. Sasaki's third-best pitch is his slider, a plus offering in 2023 that he used almost exclusively against right-handed hitters. He also probably has room to add a new pitch or two to his three existing offerings, be it a splinker like Paul Skenes picked up in the minors or something softer like a curveball for early in a count — or maybe both.

That's three plus to plus-plus pitches, and Sasaki's walk rate suggests above-average control (though his