Pirates benefit from Roki Sasaki bidding by stealing Dodgers' international signee

The chase for Roki Sasaki has had wide-ranging repercussions, as an evened playing field of MLB teams vie for the overseas star's services. Well, at least the playing field is evened financially; it's thought that a few clubs may have inherent advantages. There are a handful of teams that have met with the young pitching prospect, but no one really knows who the legitimate favorite is. The Pirates are not a team that was reported to have met with the Japanese right-hander, even though he made a lot of sense for Pittsburgh. Even so, they are still benefiting from his huge market.

Baseball America just noted, in their coverage of the Sasaki market, that the Pirates have flipped a Dominican shortstop prospect from the Dodgers. A player that was originally set to sign with Los Angeles is now going to sign with Pittsburgh, and the details of the deal are quite surprising.

Pirates take Dodgers' international prospect, Darell Morel, as Los Angeles is going all in on Roki Sasaki.

Morel was set to sign with the Dodgers in this 2025 international cycle for just $900,000, but now will sign with the Pirates for $1.8 million. That is signicant amount of money for the Pirates to commit to in this limited international signing period. They have slighly over $6.9 million to work with, and this puts them down to $5.1 million.

There is not a lot of information out on this young prospect, but Baseball America said he was a 6'5" shortstop prospect with big power upside from the left side. They also noted that he was going to be one of the top signings in the Dodgers' 2025 class. Of course, Los Angeles seems to believe that they are one of the favorites for Sasaki, and are clearing out international bonus pool money in an effort to maximize their ability to bid for the right-hander. That process has involved breaking bonds with players they'd verbally agreed to sign -- like Morel, who's now a Pirate.

The last time the Pirates got a tall, left-handed hitting power prospect that was associated with the Dodgers organization, it was Oneil Cruz, who is one of the best players on the Pirates now.

Hopefully, history repeats itself and the Pirates can develop this young prospect, but still, it is big to take away a highly touted prospect from an organization going all in on Sasaki.