Why can't Roki Sasaki earn as much as Shohei Ohtani? International free agency rules, explained

The Roki Sasaki sweepstakes have officially hit the home stretch. The righty has conducted in-person meetings with interested parties (read: some two-thirds of the league) and has begun telling teams thanks but no thanks. It sure seems like this is a two-team race between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres, although the Chicago Cubs and Toronto Blue Jays also earned visits and have yet to get a firm rejection.

It's hardly news to say that whichever team eventually has the privilege of signing Sasaki will be over the moon. But the boost Sasaki will give to a roster goes far beyond his considerable talent and his triple-digits fastball. In addition to a potential frontline starter, the team that lands him will be getting one of the biggest bargains in baseball, all thanks to the unique way in which MLB handles its international free agency — and the unique case that Sasaki presents. Here's everything to know.

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How does MLB's international free agency system work?

MLB divides its international free agents into two categories: professionals — which the league defines as players who are at least 25 years old and who have played as a professional in a foreign league for a minimum of six seasons — and amateurs, defined as any player 16 or over who doesn't yet qualify as a professional.

The former are treated like any other free agent, much like Yoshinobu Yamamoto was when he signed a 12-year, $325 million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers last winter. (Yamamoto was 25 and had completed seven seasons with Japan's Orix Buffaloes when he made the jump to the States in December 2023; once the Buffaloes agreed to make him available, he was free to negotiate with any team for however much his market would bear, provided the team that signed him paid Orix a fee as compensation.) The latter, however, are subject to a totally different set of rules.

Because the normal free agent market is so heavily tilted toward the richest teams in the league, MLB wanted to ensure that all 30 clubs would have a roughly equal chance of signing prospects to their farm systems. So it came up with the international bonus pool, essentially a spending cap that flattens out exactly how much money teams can spend on international amateurs. Each team starts with a pool ranging from $4.75 million to $5.75 million, although they're allowed to trade for up to 60 percent of their total pool value. (When you hear about a player being traded for international bonus money, this is what it means.) The money each team has in its pool is the money each team can spend on signing bonuses for international amateur players in a given year, with each signing period running from Jan. 15 to Dec. 15.

Why will Roki Sasaki's contract be so much less than Shohei Ohtani's?

Sasaki, unlike Yamamoto and other Japanese players who have come before him, is still just 23, coming off his fourth season with the Chiba Lotte Marines. That means he's still considered an amateur free agent, which means he can only be signed using a team's bonus pool money. So while Yamamoto was available to the highest bidder, Sasaki has to sign a typical Minor League contract with a signing bonus that won't be much higher than $10 million or so.

If that sounds unusual, that's because it is; it was initially assumed that Sasaki wouldn't come to the Majors until he was old enough to be treated as a foreign professional. But he eventually decided that he couldn't wait any longer to start his big-league career, much like Shohei Ohtani did once upon a time: Ohtani was just 23 when he left the Nippon-Ham Fighters for the Los Angeles Angels back in Dec. 2017, receiving a mere $2.315 million signing bonus.

Of course, Ohtani greatly enhanced his endorsement value by becoming a multi-continent megastar, then cashed in to the tune of a cool $700 million on his first contract as a professional free agent. Sasaki still has a long way to go until then, but he's hoping that this move will be the best thing for his career and his bank account in the long run.