Dodgers Roundup: Roki’s recruitment, Scott & Kirby signing reax, fans whining, Ohtani conspiracies, top prospect lists, more

When a lot happens in a week for the Dodgers, there’s a lot written, and boy was there a bunch of analysis and discourse (and whining) to sift through for this one. Strap in.

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First things first, we start with an update on the wildfire relief efforts, as the Dodgers and Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation hosted a donation event at Dodger Stadium.

It was announced these efforts will continue throughout the 2025 season.

In terms of individuals, Shohei Ohtani announced a $500k donation, while Clayton Kershaw has gathered supplies for those affected.

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The Athletic: Continuing with more serious news is an update on the Ippei Mizuhara case. While there wasn’t any doubt for people who understood that every authority was not on Shohei’s payroll or something, audio of Ippei stealing his money was recently released and should at least partially help convince all but the most delusional.

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While there have been a lot of scouting report type of pieces written about Roki Sasaki since he signed, Brim’s from back in November remains the best summary available. Fortunately, there’s been other ground to cover.

The Athletic: Stephen J. Nesbitt delivers a profile of Roki and how he was shaped by disaster.

Sasaki does not speak often about the tsunami and all he lost. (He declined to be interviewed for this story.) When he does, he speaks of the fear he felt that day, his desperation for normalcy afterward and his desire to live life to the fullest. The disaster that ripped apart his hometown dictated so much of what has come after for Sasaki; its echoes can be seen in his rise through the Japanese high school ranks, in how he handled his early success in Nippon Professional Baseball, and ultimately, in his decision to leave Japan this offseason to jump to the majors earlier than expected.

“Given what’s happened in his life,” Wolfe said, “I think he looks at the world very differently.”
Maybe there would be a $300 million deal on the table in two years. Maybe not.
“There are no absolutes in baseball,” Wolfe said. “And the way Roki looks at life, there are no absolutes in life.”
In Rikuzentakata, Murakami finds that worldview pervasive among young tsunami survivors.
“People that have undergone trauma like this, experiencing a tsunami and having loved ones pass away, you have a change in your thought process,” he said. “If you have something you want to do, do it. You only live once.”

The Athletic: A quintet of writers contributed to a story that documented Roki’s road to making his decision.

He asked each potential employer to explain the reason behind a vexing issue that lingered over his final season before a long-anticipated jump to the majors: Why did his velocity fall off?

Unsurprisingly, Ohtani was involved in recruiting Sasaki to the Dodgers.

That interest last month seemed to bode well for the Dodgers on Tuesday, when their turn came to host Sasaki. Just as the Padres and Blue Jays had done, the Dodgers greeted Sasaki with a full complement of players. Former MVPs Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts were in attendance, as were Sasaki’s future backstop, Will Smith, and the freshly-extended Tommy Edman. But the biggest star of them all was Ohtani, a teammate at the 2023 World Baseball Classic, who one official said was “driving the bus” in the effort to land Sasaki.

Los Angeles Times: Speaking of players and driving the bus, here’s details about the role that players played in recruiting Roki. Everybody expected Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto to have a great impact, and they did, but especially interesting were the others involved.

“If one of your main goals is to become the best pitcher you can possibly be, development-wise, scouting report-wise and all that stuff, I was like, this is the place for you,” Glasnow said, and added that he told Sasaki whether his motivation was “money or winning, this is the best place to grow as a baseball player. That was my message.”

When Sasaki arrived at the home of Dodgers co-owner Peter Guber for last week’s meeting — held there, with the help of a private sushi chef, because of the renovations at Dodger Stadium — he was greeted by about half a dozen players. Over the course of the evening, each began hammering home reasons for him to sign with Los Angeles.
Smith, the starting catcher, spent time discussing the club’s renowned game-planning process and how he has built rapport with the star-studded pitching staff.
Betts stood up at one point and delivered a lengthy speech that one person in attendance recalled lasting almost 10 minutes, during which the former most valuable player extolled his time in Los Angeles and the “special” place it has become in the second chapter of his career.

FanGraphs: Eric Longenhagen wrote about the incredible value the Dodgers are getting with Roki.

Where should Sasaki fall on Ben Clemens’ annual midseason Trade Value rankings? If he’s healthy and productive on a rookie deal, with six years of team control, one could argue he belongs in Paul Skenes and Elly De La Cruz territory, in the middle of the top 10. The surplus value of Sasaki’s deal for the Dodgers is almost incalculable. In addition to his signing bonus and league minimum rookie salary, the Dodgers will need to pay Sasaki’s NPB club, Chiba Lotte Marines, a 20% posting fee of $1.3 million. It makes their first-year outlay for Sasaki about $8.5 million when you include his league-minimum salary. That’s less than the first three picks in the 2024 draft received for their bonuses. Sasaki’s on-field performance is likely to outpace his salary several times over, plus he is also now an intercontinental celebrity in the second-largest media market in the U.S., on the team with the sport’s biggest global star, and generating interest and revenue on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. This is as quintessential an example of “the rich get richer” as you’ll find in sports, where amateur player acquisition is almost always tailored to funnel elite young talent to the bad teams.

Baseball America: Given that, it seems almost unfair the Dodgers could effectively get a first-round pick out of it as well.

Then if he wins the NL Rookie of the Year, or finishes in the top three in the Cy Young Award voting in any season before he qualifies for arbitration, he will earn the Dodgers a PPI pick at the end of the first round of the following MLB draft. (Technically a top three MVP vote would also meet the standards, but no pitcher will finish top three in the MVP voting and outside the top three in Cy Young Award voting).

ESPN: Unsurprisingly, Bradford Doolittle gives the Dodgers an A grade for this signing.

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Baseball Prospectus: Roger Cormier wrote an episode of The Twilight Zone tackling how Andrew Friedman secured the services of Tanner Scott. Understandable, really.

“I’m so glad you’ll be joining our family, Tanner.”
“Well…I didn’t agree to the terms just yet.”
“Didn’t you, though?”
Scott immediately became aware of a television in the room for the first time. Scott appeared on the screen next to Friedman at a press conference.
“I’m so happy to be joining the Dodgers family, “ the Scott on the television beamed.
“What the…”

Baseball Prospectus: Among other things, Timothy Jackson takes a look at the reliever profile the Dodgers are getting.

Scott bolsters the backend of their bullpen with another flamethrower. It’s not just that, though. He’s had a DRA- of 93 or better in each of the last four seasons, and surface level stats to match for each of the last two. He’s become a force when it comes to limiting baserunners⁠—he’s got the eighth-best mark since 2023⁠—and that’s something the Dodgers have prioritized with their relievers. It’s hard to give up runs if you have fewer guys on base, after all. His fastball-slider combination is one of the deadliest in the sport, and it’s good enough to counteract his high walk rates. His 50% ground-ball rate has helped him halve home run rate that was already about half of the league average. He’s also one of seven left-handed relievers to log at least 120 innings over the last two seasons and has the highest WPA of the bunch. It’s a look hardly any team can throw at opposing hitters, from a visual perspective and a results-based one.

ESPN: Doolittle gives the signing of Tanner Scott a B+ grade, downgraded due to the term and general reliever risk.

The only reason this isn’t an A is because of a nagging feeling that contracts of this value and duration for a relief pitcher — any relief pitcher — are rarely a good idea. Scott has a clean injury record — his only IL stint over the last four seasons was because of a minor knee issue — but there are no certainties in this position group. Scott’s record of high level success is fairly short. There’s a smidgen of risk here given the scope of the contract.

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FanGraphs: After Kirby Yates‘ signing was agreed upon, Ben Clemens concluded (as I sorta did as well) that spending on the bullpen made sense for the Dodgers as their final frontier of sorts.

The final verdict? It’s easy to understand why the Dodgers are working on building an even better bullpen after watching the way they managed the 2024 playoffs. If you’re a Dodgers fan, you should love this deal. The Dodgers aren’t just blindly throwing money at their roster – they’re throwing money at their roster while thinking critically about where it will be most valuable. Meanwhile, plenty of their prospective rivals are thinking about the most effective way to shed salary or defray future commitments. Snell and Sasaki might be the headliners, but Scott and Yates are the free agents that most clearly demonstrate how the Dodgers are leaning into their position as baseball’s juggernaut.

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Baseball Prospectus: It’s prospect list season and boy are they are bullish on the farm of the Dodgers, who land five prospects in their Top 101 (released before Roki signed). Zyhir Hope comes in at #8, Josue De Paula is right behind at #9, Dalton Rushing checks in at #22, Jackson Ferris continues his ascent at #52, and Alex Freeland rounds things out at #82.

MLB Pipeline: They put six Dodgers prospects on their Top 100, with Roki at #1, Rushing at #30, De Paula at #40, Ferris at #71, Freeland at #72, and Hope at #75.

Baseball America: They are similarly optimistic for their Top 100, also with six prospects. Roki is #1, Rushing is #30, Freeland is #46, De Paula is #47, Hope is #51, and Ferris is #82.

Baseball America: Other prospects who received votes for the Top 100 were Edgardo Henriquez, Eduardo Quintero, Emil Morales, Eriq Swan, and Kellon Lindsey.

Baseball America: J.J. Cooper includes Hope in his list of prospects who could be #1 come 2026.

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ESPN: I think Jeff Passan hits on an important point within this article about the reaction to the Roki signing and the Dodgers at large, which is that the Dodgers aren’t even overpaying players, they’re basically finding an inefficiency in paying market value for great talent.

This is not a chicken-and-egg situation. Teams like the Cubs and Boston Red Sox — should-be powerhouses — earn reputations quickly among players by not spending. When franchises show they care about winning, players take note. The flocking of talented players to the Dodgers is not a function of a willingness to overpay. The vast majority of the long-term deals handed out by the Dodgers are market price or club-friendly. Betts’, Freeman’s, Smith’s. Ohtani’s deal — with $68 million of his annual $70 million salary deferred for a decade — was proposed by him to the Dodgers as well as to the other teams that pursued him: Toronto, San Francisco and the Los Angeles Angels.

I’ve said this before, but it sorta seemed like Friedman once occupied a similar space of being a slave to like surplus value or something.

Every MLB club, even those with the lowest revenues, can compete for that sort of talent. So many operate with unbending devotion to their computer models, though, that the simple act of spending has become an even greater advantage for the Dodgers. With a history of teams on limited budgets annually performing among the best in the game, those franchises could fare even better stretching themselves financially and investing in winning, at the very least proportionally to those who devote a higher percentage of revenue to payroll. The Dodgers’ willingness to spend in grand sums and success with it should motivate other teams to keep up, not preclude them from doing so.

The Ohtani and Sasaki signings aren’t normal, but the rest of their team building is largely paying players fairly when other big-market teams passed, basically.

This is actually my headcanon on Friedman's thinking five years ago. Like at some point he figured out the inefficiency is not pissing yourself over the aging curve and signing great players to fair market value.

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— Chad Moriyama (@chadmoriyama.bsky.social) January 20, 2025 at 3:50 AM

I will say one of the things about the calls for a cap and what not that pisses me off most is … why should shitty, greedy owners be rewarded for not giving a fuck about anything but their own wallet? Realistically, that’s by far who would benefit the most from this arrangement: the ones pretending to be poor while raking in revenue sharing and TV money. But hey, I guess it would be American to reward greedy billionaires for being incompetent and detached.

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Anyway, the next time this is posted it probably won’t be so hectic, but this was an almost surreal time.

About Chad Moriyama

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"A highly rational Internet troll." - Los Angeles Times