TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Unlike other Japanese clubs who have reaped large transfer-fee windfalls from posting big-name stars to Major League Baseball, the Lotte Marines could get very little for letting 23-year-old pitcher Roki Sasaki move this winter.

The Marines announced Saturday they were making Sasaki available at a time in his career when MLB rules require him to sign a minor league contract and restrict the amount a team can pay in the form of a signing bonus.

The limits attached to Sasaki's amateur status will potentially reduce Lotte's posting fee to a few million dollars instead of the vastly larger sums the Marines could reap if he were to move as a top star two years from now.

Because players cannot simply make themselves available to be posted without team permission, Sasaki's posting raises questions about why the Marines would give away their top star and get little in return.

On Saturday, team executive Naoki Matsumoto painted the team's decision as an altruistic one as it "respected his desire" to play in MLB.

Yet, because of the way Nippon Professional Baseball's rules are structured, it is conceivable that an extremely valuable and talented amateur player could manipulate the rules to force this kind of decision from his new team when signing his first pro contract.

Unlike MLB's amateur draft, which gives teams that fail to sign their draft picks a compensation pick the following year, NPB clubs get nothing if the player whose rights they hold refuses to sign.

The Marines won Sasaki's rights by pulling the winning lot in the 2019 draft. Blessed with a rocket for an arm, Sasaki was thoroughly scouted by MLB teams in high school and could have demanded a lot from Lotte in order to sign.

And because NPB rules allow for legally binding supplemental contracts between players and teams, it is possible a player in a very strong position could drive a hard bargain and contractually obligate his new team to post him at a time of his choosing.

There is no evidence Sasaki made such a demand, but if he had, the Marines would have been in a pickle, because Japan's draft system paints teams into corners when dealing with elite amateurs who have more options than the team does.

Japanese teams whose players move to MLB on minor league contracts are paid a fee worth 25 percent of their signing bonus, which would rarely amount to more than $1 million.

Had Sasaki and the Marines waited until 2026, when the pitcher would be 25 years old and treated by MLB as an international professional free agent, Lotte's posting fee could soar well past $20 million.

Speaking to the media Saturday, Matsumoto said the team is posting Japan's hardest-throwing pitcher because Lotte respected Sasaki's desires without regard to the potential cost to the club of letting him go so early.

"I've been speaking with him over the years without concern for that," Matsumoto said. "He's an elite player for both Japan and Lotte, and I want him to do his best on the world's top stage."

Sasaki did not pitch in a single official game at any level as a first-year pro because he was physically unable to recover quickly enough from the inflammation accrued in his practice sessions.

In the four years in which he pitched for Lotte's major league team, Sasaki has gone 29-15 with a 2.10 ERA and struck out 505 batters in 394-2/3 innings.

Because he has only slowly developed the physical resilience to bounce back from his previous start, Sasaki has yet to throw the 143 innings in a season that would qualify him for a league ERA title.

Japanese teams typically only post players who have made sizeable contributions over a number of years. And though Sasaki has often been amazing, his lack of innings would suggest he had more to prove in Japan before the Marines posted him.

This year, he threw his first complete game in two years and won 10 games for the first time, but Matsumoto said these were not factors in the team's decision.

"Not at all," he said. "Reaching double digits in wins was a splendid achievement, but we made the decision based on everything he'd done over the past five years."

(By Jim Allen)