Roki Sasaki: The Next MLB Ace?

The Monster of the Reiwa era has arrived. On Friday night, Japanese right-hander Roki Sasaki chose the Los Angeles Dodgers as his major league team and will soon grace American baseball fans with his devastating arsenal and captivating upside. Sasaki is only 23 and has had domestic evaluators salivating about his potential since he was a teenager. Armed with a triple-digit fastball, a mind-bending splitter and the determination of a budding ace, Sasaki's posting last month shook up the industry and had virtually every team dreaming of adding him to its rotation. In four years with Japan's Chiba Lotte Marines, Sasaki posted a 2.10 ERA, 0.89 WHIP, 505 strikeouts and 88 walks in 394⅔ innings. In one two-game stretch in April 2022, he twirled a perfect game -- highlighted by 13 consecutive strikeouts, an NPB record -- and followed it with eight perfect innings. Now, he'll attempt to follow Yu Darvish, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Kodai Senga and Shota Imanaga, Japanese aces who all made the transition to Major League Baseball rather smoothly. One day, Sasaki could be better than all of them. But he's not there yet. ESPN spoke to numerous evaluators who have spent years tracking Sasaki in Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball league, and the picture they painted was one of a gifted, determined pitcher with promise, but one who, despite the hype that has surrounded him since high school, is not yet fully formed. So what can the Dodgers expect from him in 2025? What follows are the five biggest takeaways from the scouts and evaluators on Sasaki, for this coming season and beyond.