The Japanese phenom will be coming to the majors this year—but not to New York.
In unsurprising news, the Mets have been told that they are out on Roki Sasaki. Though they had previously met with Sasaki in December, the Mets were always a long shot to sign him. The industry-wide assumption for several years has been that Sasaki would sign with the Dodgers whenever he was posted.
Because Sasaki is younger than 25, any signing team would’ve had to pay him out of the international free agency bonus pool, a notable complication. Teams typically agree to their largest deals far ahead of time (years, often), and whichever team signs Sasaki will likely have to re-neg on some or all of those agreements. You can imagine how that might affect the signing-team’s relationships in the international free agent market even beyond missing out on whichever players they had planned to sign. While Sasaki is a superior talent to any other available IFA, signing him would not have been without significant cost.
With Sasaki off the board, the Mets remain in line to sign one of the top IFAs in the class, 16-year-old Dominican shortstop Elian Peña. Peña is likely to receive the largest non-Sasaki bonus in this class and is regarded as being worth that investment by most outlets—though the unreliability of these reports is worth noting. Currently, the Mets are not linked to any other top-50 names per Baseball America, but they will ultimately add multiple players beyond Peña, as well.