ESPN MLB insider Author of “The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports”
The Chiba Lotte Marines announced Saturday that they will begin the process of posting Roki Sasaki, the Japanese right-hander considered one of the most talented pitchers in the world, paving the way for the 23-year-old to join Major League Baseball in 2025.
The posting system is the method of transfer between MLB and Nippon Professional Baseball that makes him available to all 30 teams.
“I am very grateful to the team for officially allowing me to post,” Sasaki said in a statement posted by the Marines on X. “There were many things that did not go well during my five years with the Marines, but I was able to get to this point by concentrating only on baseball, with the support of my teammates, staff, front office, and fans. I will do my best to work my way up from my minor contract to become the best player in the world, so that I will have no regrets in my one and only baseball career and live up to the expectations of everyone who has supported me.”
Sasaki, nicknamed “The Monster of the Reiwa Era,” throws a fastball that regularly reaches triple digits and complements it with a frontline split-fingered fastball and a slider.
Because of his age, Sasaki is considered an international amateur free agent and can sign only a minor league contract, which drastically limits how much teams can pay him — and how much Lotte reaps through the associated 20% posting fee. Players who are at least 25 with six years played in a foreign league can sign major league contracts when posted. Had he waited, Sasaki could have sought a deal for hundreds of millions of dollars, similar to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers in late December for 12 years and $325 million. Instead, Sasaki, who asked to be posted last year but was denied by the team, will take a similar path as Shohei Ohtani, the superstar who arrived in MLB at 23 and signed with the Los Angeles Angels for $2.3 million.
The timing of Sasaki’s posting — which has yet to be set, sources said — will determine whether he falls into the 2024 or 2025 international amateur class. When a player is posted, he has a 45-day window to sign with a major league team. Though Sasaki would join an organization on a minor league deal, a team can add him to its major league roster before the 2025 season.
International amateur bonus pools are capped, with the top teams this year able to spend just over $7.1 million, larger-market, higher-spending teams at $4.6 million and the rest in between. Teams can add up to 60% of their allotted pools by trading for other teams’ bonus-pool money. Most teams have spent the majority of their 2024 bonus pools already, with the signing period for international free agents running from Jan. 15 to Dec. 15 annually.
Were the official posting to be delayed until mid-December — it typically takes weeks to complete the process — Sasaki could sign when the 2025 international period opens Jan. 15. Though most teams have commitments lined up for players in that period — the top bonus pools are around $7.5 million and the bottom around $5.1 million — they could trade for international bonus space or free up money by not honoring nonbinding commitments they have made to teenagers from Latin American countries, an infrequent but not unheard of occurrence.
For a player of Sasaki’s talent, teams are likely to do whatever they can to convince him to sign.
Sasaki emerged as a national star in Japan five years ago during Koshien, the national high school baseball tournament that is one of the country’s biggest annual sporting events. Over an eight-day period, he threw more than 500 pitches, including a 12-inning, 21-strikeout, 194-pitch complete game.
In 2022, at 20, Sasaki threw a 19-strikeout perfect game for Lotte and followed in his next start a week later with eight more perfect innings before being pulled. Sasaki’s immense fastball velocity shown during the 2023 World Baseball Classic — he averaged 100.5 mph in Japan’s semifinal start against Mexico — introduced him to an international audience, and though his request to join MLB after the 2023 season went unmet by Lotte, the inevitability of his departure only grew.
Sasaki did not sign his 2024 contract until January, just before Lotte began spring training. Rarely do players hold out from signing their deals until then, and the episode wound up a precursor for what would come after a 10-5 season in which Sasaki posted a 2.35 ERA, struck out 129, walked 32 and gave up two home runs in 111 innings.
Often players are posted when Japanese teams regard them as having “earned” the privilege, multiple sources familiar with past postings said. Though Sasaki has shown flashes of brilliance over his 394⅔ innings — going 29-15 with a 2.10 ERA and 505 strikeouts against 88 walks in 64 starts over four seasons — he would not arrive in MLB with the same sort of résumé as his predecessors.
The rousing success of Japanese players in MLB has been one of the game’s biggest stories of the past decade, with soon-to-be three-time MVP Ohani, Yamamoto, left-handers Shota Imanaga (Chicago Cubs) and Yusei Kikuchi (free agent), and outfielders Seiya Suzuki (Cubs) and Masataka Yoshida (Boston Red Sox) all going through the posting system. Right-hander Kodai Senga joined the New York Mets without a posting fee after 11 seasons with the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks.
MLB teams had braced for the possibility that Lotte would hold onto Sasaki for at least two more years, allowing him to reach 25 and for the organization to experience the full financial benefit of the posting. NPB teams control players’ rights for nine seasons before they reach free agency and can operate outside of the posting system. Had Lotte waited until after the 2026 season, it could have received tens of millions of dollars via the posting fee paid by the acquiring team. The Dodgers paid the Orix Blue Wave more than $50 million after signing Yamamoto.
Los Angeles will be linked strongly to Sasaki, but assuming he will go to the Dodgers is premature. While the presence of Sasaki’s Samurai Japan teammates Ohtani and Yamamoto in Los Angeles is advantageous, the attention they bring — and the media horde that follows them — adds a different element than other teams.
Throughout the 2024 season, MLB presidents of baseball operations and general managers were fixtures at Sasaki’s starts. Sasaki is close with right-hander Yu Darvish, whose team, the San Diego Padres, figures to be a potential landing spot. Both New York teams have extreme interest in Sasaki, though he could also opt for an organization with pedigree and experience (the Chicago Cubs), a team in an international city (the Toronto Blue Jays), one whose past success with Japanese players still resonates (Darvish started his career with the Texas Rangers) or those whose reputation for bringing the best out in players might appeal (the Tampa Bay Rays). Plenty of other franchises can — and will — make strong appeals to Sasaki once he is posted.
Unlike a traditional free agency, Sasaki’s comes with a financial ceiling, making him a bargain to all 30 teams. Sasaki’s talent is not in doubt to anyone, even as average fastball velocity this season dropped by two ticks, down to just above 97 mph. Sasaki showed plenty of ability to ramp it up to triple digits when desired, and he could soon develop into the hardest-throwing starter in MLB. His best pitch is still the splitter, whose movement profile makes it unique, even in an MLB where the split has come back into vogue in recent seasons.
Durability is the biggest question with Sasaki. His career high in innings is 129⅓, set in 2022. This year, he made 18 starts after a torn oblique and right arm soreness caused him to sit out about a quarter of his outings.
The recruitment of Sasaki comes amid a free agent period that is expected to move more quickly than recent years and adds a layer of intrigue into an offseason in which Sasaki would join free agent outfielder Juan Soto and right-hander Corbin Burnes as the most coveted players available — at a fraction of the price.
Eli Lederman covers college football and recruiting for ESPN.com. He joined ESPN in 2024 after covering the University of Oklahoma for Sellout Crowd and the Tulsa World.
Four-star Florida State quarterback pledge Tramell Jones pulled his commitment from the Seminoles Thursday morning, marking the sixth departure from Mike Norvell’s 2025 class across the program’s 1-9 start to the regular season this fall.
Jones, a 6-foot, 190-pound passer from Jacksonville, Florida, is ESPN’s ninth-ranked dual-threat quarterback prospect in the 2025 cycle. The longest-tenured member of Florida State’s 2025 class, Jones’ decommitment arrives five days after Norvell fired three members of his coaching staff on Sunday following the program’s 52-3 defeat at Notre Dame, headlined by the exit of offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Alex Atkins.
Jones’ move represents the latest blow to a Seminoles’ class that’s taken a series of hits this fall as Florida State has followed its 13-1 in 2023 with a disastrous 2024 campaign. A previous lynchpin in the program’s 2025 class, Jones follows ESPN 300 prospects Myron Charles, Javion Hilson, Malik Clark, Daylan McCutcheon and CJ Wiley among the top recruits who have left Norvell’s incoming class since the Seminoles’ Aug. 24 season opener. Jones’ exit leaves Florida State with 12 prospects left committed in 2025, including five ESPN 300 pledges led by five-star offensive tackle Solomon Thomas, ESPN’s No. 13 overall prospect in the 2025 cycle.
Florida State sat at No. 37 in ESPN’s class rankings in 2025 prior to Jones’ decommitment Thursday with further movement expected out of the Seminoles’ class in the coming weeks.
With his recruitment reopened, Jones stands as one of the top uncommitted quarterbacks in the final weeks of the 2025 cycle. A four-year starter at Florida’s Mandarin High School, Florida has remained in contact with Jones this fall, and sources within the Gators’ program are optimistic that Florida will ultimately land Jones in the final weeks of the cycle following the school’s decision to keep Billy Napier as head coach beyond 2024.
Florida is set to host a series of high-profile recruits when the Gators host LSU at 3:30 p.m. on ABC Saturday afternoon. Florida State is off in Week 12 before a Nov. 23 visit from Charleston Southern.
BARBARA WEITZ SAT at a Nebraska Board of Regents meeting over the summer, when thinking about ways to generate revenue to help mitigate recent university budget cuts, she blurted out an idea.
Without much thought or research, Weitz wondered aloud whether passionate Nebraska fans would pay money to have cremated remains stored in a columbarium, a standalone structure with cubbies that house said remains. Even better, with a grass field set to be installed at Memorial Stadium in 2026, what if that columbarium was built underneath the football field as part of the renovations?
“Then grandma or grandpa or sister or brother could be a Husker supporter forever,” Weitz said.
Her fellow regents laughed her out of the room. Nobody liked the thought of games being played above a de facto burial ground. The idea was impractical, anyway. If the columbarium was built under the field, they would also have to construct an underground entrance for people to be able to visit, and how exactly would that work?
Feeling discouraged, Weitz went about her other work. But the meeting was public, and soon a newspaper article published her idea. Before long, the emails started coming in. One came from a casket company in Kansas interested in helping make the hypothetical columbarium. Another came from a company in Ireland claiming to have done a similar thing already, for a rugby and soccer club in the United Kingdom. She also learned someone was trying to build a columbarium in South Carolina, near Williams-Brice Stadium, but plans had stalled.
The idea gained enough traction that at a recent football game, someone stopped Weitz and said that if the columbarium became a reality, she would pay to have her husband’s ashes housed there. Weitz got plenty of emails from Cornhusker fans to the same effect.
When she blurted out her idea, Weitz did not know just how often fans spread the cremated remains of their friends and loved ones at college football venues across the country, mostly without permission. Choice Mutual, a company that offers insurance policies to cover end-of-life expenses, conducted a survey that asked Americans where they would want their ashes spread if they choose to be cremated.
The survey, published in July, listed the top choice in all 50 states. Sports venues topped the list in 11, including college football stadiums in Arkansas, Idaho, Michigan, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. Anthony Martin, owner and CEO of Choice Mutual, said in an email, “We were definitely surprised by the prevalence of sporting venues as the target. We assumed some sporting venues would show up, but not this many.”
“Let’s face it. Fan is short for fanatic,” said Chris Gerbasi, who helped spread the remains of his good friend, John Burr, at Michigan Stadium in 2005. “He was a diehard, no pun intended. It made perfect sense for him to want his ashes to be on the field. He would have laughed his ass off at us being able to achieve that.”
MOST SCHOOLS HAVE strict rules prohibiting the spreading of ashes onto playing surfaces, both to preserve the grass and also simply to limit trespassing. But when you are determined to complete a final wish, you simply find a way.
Like Gerbasi did. He and three others set out for Michigan Stadium in July 2005 to honor Burr, who died following complications from an accident at age 41. Gerbasi and Burr attended Michigan together in the 1980s and went to the 1998 Rose Bowl that clinched a national championship season for the Wolverines.
When Gerbasi was a student, Michigan Stadium was easy to enter. But when he and his companions arrived that summer night, they encountered one locked gate after another. They walked around the stadium, until, Gerbasi says, “It was almost like seeing the light.”
A bright light was coming from the east side of the stadium, where renovations were underway. They saw a way in, down the ramp where players walk from the locker room to the field, and made their way to the 50-yard line.
“I don’t get excited about too many things, but it was awe-inspiring for the four of us to be standing on the 50-yard line in an empty Michigan Stadium,” Gerbasi said.
Burr’s brother handed Gerbasi a bag with the ashes.
“There just happened to be a little gust of wind, and I kind of twirled the bag in the air a little bit, and all the ashes flew out, and the wind caught ’em, and they flew down the field,” Gerbasi said. “Looking back on it now, it was cool as hell. It was like somebody opened up this door for us.”
Parker Hollowell had a similar idea for his dad, Dean Hollowell, who died in 2015 following a car accident at age 72. Dean was a lifelong Ole Miss fan and took Parker to games his entire life. When his stepmom said his father was going to be cremated, Parker knew what he needed to do.
He waited until dusk one night in August that year and drove to Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, the place where he and his dad shared so many memories. A new field was being put in, and though workers were still around, nobody said a word to Hollowell and a friend as they made their way to the 50-yard line.
Hollowell said a few words to his dad as he spread the ashes, while his friend took a video.
“I thought it was a tribute to my dad,” Hollowell said. “That was our life, that’s what we’ve done as a family. Period. Now my dad’s got a 50-yard line seat. He’s right there with me when I go to games. I don’t see anything wrong with it.”
Having done it for his dad, Hollowell now has his final resting spot picked out.
“I am going to ask my son to put me in the end zone. Where Tre Harris scored on LSU [last year],” Hollowell said.
Ann and her husband, Johnny, had a similar conversation at their dinner table in North Carolina years ago. Ann, who asked that her last name not be used, cannot remember how they got on the topic, but they started discussing where they wanted to be buried.
Johnny asked to be cremated and have his ashes scattered in three spots. First, the beach. Easy enough.
Second, Carter-Finley Stadium, home to his beloved NC State Wolfpack. Slightly more challenging, but OK.
And, if possible, Kenan Stadium, home to North Carolina, as friend Theo Manos recalled, “so he could haunt those MFers.”
“I thought he was kidding,” Ann said. “But then I realized he was serious.”
Ann figured she would have time to plan it all out. But Johnny died unexpectedly at age 52 in 2007. A “total shock,” Ann said.
She decided she would sprinkle his ashes in their longtime tailgating spot outside Carter-Finley, a picturesque area filled with trees. They had a tight-knit tailgating group — some had been friends with Johnny since kindergarten. On the day they spread his ashes, they formed a circle, said a few prayers and then Ann placed his remains near a spruce tree.
The spot has become a resting place for several others, including their son, Allen, who died in 2017. “I thought that was a good sentimental thing to do,” Ann said. Johnny’s sister, Nancy, also has some of her remains there, as well as another tailgater in their group.
She noted the spruce tree “shot up out of nowhere” after placing Johnny there. But last year, NC State cut down many trees in their tailgating area — including that beloved spruce. Ann still brings flowers to every home game and places them on the spot where she sprinkled the remains of her husband and son. The group pours a drink on the ashes and says, “Here’s to you, Johnny.”
As for Kenan Stadium, let’s just say Johnny did make his way onto the field. How and when, well, Ann says that must remain a mystery. But it should be noted NC State is 6-2 in Chapel Hill since Johnny died.
WHEN JASON FAIRES was in his first year as Oklahoma director of athletic fields and grounds in 2019, he spotted a man in the south end zone holding a paper grocery bag, without gloves on, taking handfuls of something unidentifiable and dropping it on the ground.
“I start to lose it, and ‘I’m like, ‘What the hell are you doing?'” said Faires, now golf course superintendent at Dornick Hills Country Club in Ardmore, Oklahoma. “He goes, ‘This is my dad. Just spreading his ashes out here, like he wanted me to.’ I’m like, ‘Did you get permission to do this?’ He didn’t think he needed permission, and he’s just dropping clumps. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen ashes. It’s not just ashes, it’s frickin’ bone and everything.
“So out of respect for him, I said, ‘OK.’ As soon as he left, I had to go out there and kick him around, spread him out. I felt weird doing that. I started telling that story at a meeting, and they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, that happens a lot.'”
Plenty of field managers across conferences have stories about encountering fans evading gates, waiting out security personnel or downright trespassing in their quest to make it onto the field to spread ashes. While it is not technically illegal to scatter ashes, most states require permission be granted if remains will be spread on private property — like football stadiums — or on public property or national parks. Some states require a permit to spread ashes in public areas.
“When I worked at LSU in 2007, it was about 2:30 in the morning after the Virginia Tech game and we saw someone leaning up against the goal post,” said Brandon Hardin, now the superintendent of sports turf at Mississippi State. “We were like, ‘Hey, what’s this guy doing?’ He had a book in his hand, and he opened it and dumped ashes out on the ground and had his moment. Then he turned around and walked off. Never saw him again.”
At Texas A&M, too, where Nick McKenna serves as assistant athletics director of sports fields. He recalled the time the Yell Leaders at Texas A&M had a former leader’s ashes spread at Kyle Field without permission, upsetting their longtime facility manager.
“So he had the head field manager go out, vacuum them up, put them in a jar, and he took them to the Yell Leader and said, “Y’all left someone out there on the field the other day. Just wanted to return him to you,” McKenna said.
Another time, someone had spread ashes in the outfield before a baseball game.
“I remember having to talk with our center fielder because there was this cloud ring of remains,” McKenna said. “He was like, what in the heck? I was like, ‘You’re out there basically playing in a ring of death.'”
As all three turf managers explained, fans are unaware of how much goes into caring for the fields across all their athletics venues. That includes resodding the fields after a set amount of time. Oklahoma, for example, resodded the field last summer. Texas A&M does it every 12 to 15 years.
“So the majority of these relatives who have been spread on that field are down on the left side of the driving range at the OU golf course because that’s where all the material goes when we redo the field,” Faires said. “You don’t say that or anything, but you kind of feel bad for them.”
When grounds crews see ashes that have been left on a field, they quickly work to limit the damage. The ashes are either vacuumed up or blown around with a backpack blower. Some will run water through them to flush them through. What grounds crews want to avoid is their sophisticated and expensive lawn mowers picking up bone fragments, which could damage the equipment.
Hardin says he has gained a newfound perspective on spreading ashes to fulfill a loved ones’ request, after he did it for his dad last November in the Arkansas mountains.
“It’s very special to the person that does it, so we try to be very understanding,” Hardin said. “We tell people no, and then they still find a way to do it, because it was somebody’s last wish. People need that closure.
“It’s not going to hurt the grass, but if you ask certain people within organizations or schools, it gives you the heebie-jeebies knowing that it’s there and visible.”
That makes the columbarium idea all the more appealing to Weitz. She has tried to brainstorm other ideas than having it under the field — could it be outside the stadium? In the tunnel leading to the field?
“These responses I got after the meeting said to me this is creative and there are ways to do these things,” Weitz said. “So it really encouraged me in a lot of ways, but I haven’t come up with any new ideas.”
Putting a columbarium under the field might not be practical, but burial grounds for mascots do exist both inside and outside stadiums. In fact, Mex, a brindle bulldog who was Oklahoma’s mascot in the 1920s, is buried in a casket under the football stadium. Bully I, Mississippi State’s first mascot, is buried on stadium grounds. Other Bully mascots have had their ashes spread on the football field.
Texas A&M has a burial ground for its Reveille mascots on the north end of Kyle Field. A statue of the SMU mascot, Peruna, is on the burial site of Peruna I outside Ford Stadium. Sanford Stadium has a mausoleum dedicated to its UGA mascots.
McKenna remembers reading about Weitz and her columbarium idea over the summer.
“I don’t know where you would put it logistically, but as somebody who’s encountered people spreading ashes and understands how often it happens and the nuances, it’s not the worst idea in the world,” he said.
Weitz will keep thinking about it. Others will keep finding ways to honor their loved ones and their passion for college football. Loved ones such as Fred “The Head” Miller, who once asked former Florida State alumni association president Jim Melton if his head could be buried underneath the Seminole logo at midfield.
“True story,” Melton says.
Miller played fullback at Florida State from 1973-76 and then became the ultimate super fan — painting the Seminoles logo on his bald head for every home game, beginning in 1981. Hence his nickname.
He died in 1992 at age 38 of a heart attack and was cremated. Miller asked his family to scatter his ashes at Doak Campbell Stadium.
The Hockey Hall of Fame is going to swing open its doors to some impressive former NHL stars in the next few years. Legends such as Zdeno Chara, Joe Thornton, Duncan Keith and Patrice Bergeron. Eventually Jaromir Jagr will be inducted. Probably in his 80s, when he’s done playing.
The Hall can welcome up to four men’s players in every annual class. Given how many current NHL players have a legitimate case for immortality, the selection committee will not suffer for a lack of choices.
Here is a tiered ranking of active NHL players based on their current Hall of Fame cases. We’ve picked the brain of Hockey Hall of Fame expert Paul Pidutti of Adjusted Hockey to help figure out the locks, the maybes, “the Hall of Very Good” and which young stars are on the path to greatness.
Let’s begin with the two players who have defined this century of hockey, and another player whose legend has grown to the point where he’s a sure-thing Hall of Famer.