Why Roki Sasaki Is Eligible For The Baseball America Top 100

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Image credit: Roki Sasaki pitching in the World Baseball Classic in 2023. (Photo by Rob Tringali/WBCI/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

Last year, righthander Yoshinobu Yamamoto signed with the Dodgers as one of the best pitchers to come over from Nippon Pro Baseball (NPB) in several years. He did not rank on the Baseball America Top 100 Prospects list.

And here we are a year later, righthander Roki Sasaki has signed with the Dodgers as one of the best pitchers to come over from the NPB in years, and he ranks No. 1 on the Top 100.

So why does one player rank on the Top 100 and the other doesn’t? Under our current BA policies, a player who meets the “foreign professional” standard does not qualify for the Top 100. 

Top 100 Prospects For 2025

Baseball America presents its initial ranking of the Top 100 prospects in the game for 2025, headlined by Roki Sasaki.

Yamamoto was 25 years old with seven years of service in a top-level international professional league when he came to the U.S. as a player who was posted by his NPB team, but free to sign as an MLB free agent with his NPB team receiving a posting fee.

The same rule applies this year to Dodgers second baseman Hyesong Kim and Orioles righthander Tomoyuki Sugano. Neither are eligible for the Top 100.

Sasaki, like Shohei Ohtani before him, is coming to the U.S. while not meeting the “foreign professional” standard, even though he is clearly a foreign professional. That means he’s subject to the international amateur bonus limits, and he can only sign a minor league contract with a signing bonus that fits within teams’ international bonus pool limits.

As we have spelled out, the Dodgers could not offer Sasaki anything more than a MiLB contract and a bonus. They can’t promise him a contract extension, or even guarantee an Opening Day roster spot.

So when Sasaki arrives, like Ohtani before him, he will be technically a minor leaguer, even if he’s not going to spend a day in the minor leagues.

Baseball America used to treat all players coming from Japan, Cuba or Korea as eligible prospects, which is why Ichiro Suzuki was the No. 9 prospect on the 2001 Top 100 even if he already had over 1,000 hits and nine seasons in the NPB. 

Since Sasaki is signing a MiLB contract, we are including him as an eligible prospect. But this same rule applies no matter what a player’s original country of origin is. If righthander Carter Stewart, the Braves’ 2018 first-round pick, returns from the NPB next year or the year after as a posted “foreign professional,” he will not be eligible for the Top 100, even if he’s a United States citizen who has yet to play one game in MiLB or MLB.

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