How do the Texas Rangers fit into the pursuit of Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki?
Joel Wolfe peered out at a magnificently large crowd of assembled reporters inside a ballroom at the Hilton Anatole. His client — Japanese right-handed phenom Roki Sasaki — is the most impactful player left on the free agency market, and until Tuesday morning at the winter meetings, he’d been restricted from talking about the situation “until we knew what was going to happen with Roki” due to MLB rules.
“By the way,” the agent said one minute into his opening statement, “that’s why I’m here.”
It drew a laugh from the crowd.
As if there were any question.
Wolfe confirmed Sasaki’s posting on Tuesday and said that the 23-year-old could begin to meet with suitors as early as next week. He didn’t specify the number of teams that Sasaki will entertain, but he expects the process to be “a little open-ended” as it pertains to scheduling and that the meetings will be in person and in the United States.
Sasaki’s posting opened a 45-day negotiation window. The signing, Wolfe said, will take place sometime between Jan. 15-22, though it’s possible that Sasaki makes his final decision before that period.
Wolfe said “at least half the league, or more” scouted Sasaki in Japan this past season when he pitched for Chiba Lotte in Nippon Professional Baseball; the Texas Rangers were among them, and president of baseball operations Chris Young said Monday that the club has “done a lot of preparation behind the scenes internally” in the event that Sasaki was posted this winter.
The Rangers are expected to make their presentation to Sasaki before the winter meetings end on Wednesday, a person familiar with the club’s thinking said.
Now it’s just a matter of whether it’ll be enough to woo the flame-throwing ace. Wolfe fielded questions for 30 minutes in regards to Sasaki’s interests, desires and outlook as it pertains to his eventual major league landing spot. Here’s how the Rangers stacked up in several of the key areas that Wolfe discussed.
The financials: It’s as close to an equal playing field as any pursuit of a free agent of this caliber can get. Because Sasaki is under 25-years-old, he is subject to baseball’s amateur international free agency rules, which means he can only be signed using international free agency bonus funds. Teams have between $5,146,200 and $7,555,500 for their 2025 international bonus pools, and the Rangers are in the middle of that pack with a $6,261,600 pool.
Team success: Wolfe — who represents Nolan Arenado, Giancarlo Stanton, Yu Darvish and others at Wasserman — described Sasaki as “one of the most driven, intense players” he’s ever been around. A suitor’s ability to compete, naturally, is a factor.
“He has paid attention to how teams have done as far as overall success,” Wolfe said, “both this year and in years past.”
It’s not explicitly clear, Wolfe said, how Sasaki weighs the difference between teams that have had recent success and those that are projected to have success in the future. The Rangers, theoretically, can fit both boxes: They won the World Series in 2023, but have a young core — including Josh Jung, Wyatt Langford, Evan Carter and Kumar Rocker — to drive success beyond the present.
A history with Japanese players: Wolfe acknowledged that it could be beneficial for Sasaki to have an older Japanese teammate to “show him the ropes” of major league life, but he doesn’t believe that the right-hander needs that kind of veteran presence to succeed.
The Rangers do not have a Japanese player on their major league roster.
They once had one of the best.
“He’s grown up idolizing players like Yu Darvish, [Masahiro] Tanaka, [Daisuke] Matsuzaka,” Wolfe said. “This is something he’s always wanted to do.”
Darvish, now a member of the San Diego Padres rotation, signed with the Rangers in 2012 (just weeks after the winter meetings were last held at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas) and spent the first four-and-a-half years of his career with them. Wolfe classified the Padres are a team “that he would seriously consider,” but said that Sasaki’s relationship with Darvish is “private.”
“How much will that weigh on his decision making?” Wolfe said. “We’ll have to find out.”
Wolfe also said that he’s interested to see if Sasaki wants to be a trail blazer (meaning, becoming the first big-time Japanese free agent to sign with a franchise) or if he’d rather choose a destination that’s already employed one.
Geography: West Coast teams tend to have a theoretic advantage with Japanese free agents given their relative proximity, though Wolfe said that Sasaki hasn’t raised that issue.
“I think about five or 10 years ago,” Wolfe said, “that was something that maybe [Japanese players] weighed a little bit more, but now you can fly direct from Japan to most of the major cities in the U.S. It’s not really that much of an issue.”
Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, for the record, offers a nonstop flight to Tokyo International Airport through American Airlines.
Market size: Sasaki has faced “a lot of negativity in the media directed at him” in Japan because of his interest in a jump to the major leagues, according to Wolfe, and experienced a reaction to his rumored decision that was “very detrimental to his mental state.”
As it pertains to his future major league home, bigger might not necessarily be better.
“I think there’s an argument to be made that a small-to-mid market team might be beneficial to him as a soft landing coming from Japan given what he’s been through,” Wolfe said. “Given what he’s been through, and not having an enjoyable experience with the media, it might be. It might be, I’m not saying it will be, I don’t know how he’s going to view it, but it might be beneficial for him to be in a smaller market.”
Dallas-Fort Worth is the nation’s fifth-largest media market, according to Nielsen, though the way in which its professional sports team are covered in the news differ from the intensity of markets like Boston, New York and Los Angeles.
“He hasn’t said anything negative about any particular city,” Wolfe said. “And he actually hasn’t said anything overly positive about it. We haven’t had any detailed discussion about particular cities yet, but I think he could handle [a big market] based on what I’ve seen.”
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