We haven't heard much connection between the Seattle Mariners and Roki Sasaki's free agent market this offseason, but former major league reliever Trevor May th

Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) team Chiba Lotte Marines confirmed on Sunday that phenom pitcher Roki Sasaki will be posted to the MLB soon. About Sasaki: Observers previously speculated that Sasaki may join Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto on the Los Angeles Dodgers roster.

Unlike other high profile Japanese players, Sasaki will take less money by signing a minor league contract at age 23, betting on himself in hopes of a huge payday later.

The biggest Japanese baseball star since Shohei Ohtani is on his way to MLB at 23. A long-anticipated, cost-controlled bidding war will ensue.

The Mets were early adopters of NPB starting pitchers. Masato Yoshii was a rotation regular for the 1998 and 1999 Mets. At that point, only Hideo Nomo, Hideki Irabu and (briefly) Shigetoshi Hasegawa had started an MLB game in 35 years.

The circumstantial evidence supports, but by no means proves such a conclusion. The Dodgers appear to be a fit for Sasaki for multiple reasons, from their track record of developing pitchers to their employment of two other past Japanese phenoms in Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

The offseason pitching market got a lot more interesting with Japanese superstar Roki Sasaki set to be posted for MLB teams. Per ESPN's Jeff Passan, the

The word “phenom” has been thrown out plenty with 23-year-old right-hander Roki Sasaki and understandably so. After breaking Shohei Ohtani’s Japanese high school fastball velocity record by touching 101 mph with his heater,