There’s not much question that while Major League Baseball remains the most prestigious and competitive league in the world, several other international professional leagues have closed the gap.
In light of this, it’s worth wondering what truly should constitute a “rookie” in Major League Baseball. Veteran players who have been professionals for more than a handful of seasons are coming to MLB and getting Rookie of the Year votes and it doesn’t quite seem right at times.
Shota Imanaga of the Cubs last season, for example, was 30 years old and had eight years of experience in Nippon Professional Baseball, the top league in Japan. Imanaga didn’t need much time to acclimate to MLB. He went 15-3 with a 2.91 ERA and made the All-Star team. He also finished fourth in Rookie of the Year voting on the National League side.
He sure didn’t feel like a rookie, at least not in the same way Paul Skenes, Jackson Merrill and Jackson Chourio felt.
The favorite to win the NL Rookie of the Year in 2025 is Roki Sasaki of the Dodgers, who is going off at +200 on Caesars. Sasaki is only 23, but he still has four years of NPB experience with more than 400 innings pitched.
The experience factor isn’t anything new with players coming from Asia. The 1995 NL Rookie of the Year was Hideo Nomo. He was 26 years old and already had five years of NPB experience. The 2001 AL Rookie of the Year was Ichiro Suzuki, the 27-year-old future Hall of Famer who had already collected 1,278 hits in Japan. In between the two, Kazuhiro Sasaki, at age 32 with 11 years of NPB experience, won the 2000 AL Rookie of the Year. It happened again in 2018, when two-way sensation Shohei Ohtani won AL Rookie of the Year. He was only 23, so he felt a bit more rookie-ish, but he also brought with him five seasons of NPB experience.
This isn’t limited to Japan, either. The 2014 AL Rookie of the Year was José Abreu, who had to defect from Cuba in order to make the majors. A harrowing ordeal, to be clear, but that doesn’t erase the 10 years of experience in Cuba’s top professional league. He was 27 and had the appearance of a grizzled veteran with the ’14 White Sox. Because that’s what he was.
This isn’t some xenophobic or merely sanctimonious “players must be American!” stance. Quite the contrary. The other professional leagues are so much better than ever before with baseball becoming much more mainstream and competitive across the globe.
While players like Nomo and Ichiro — along with others like Hideki Matsui and Kaz Sasaki — were pioneers at the time, the leap happens so often now it isn’t nearly as newsworthy.
Like Imanaga, Yoshinobu Yamamoto was a rookie last season, though he got a free-agent contract stateside that could only be achieved under the current posting system after having at least six years of service time. Kodai Senga finished second in NL Rookie of the Year voting in 2023. Jung Hoo Lee came over from South Korea’s KBO to join the Giants last season, just as Ha-Seong Kim and others — going back to the likes of Chan Ho Park and then Shin-Soo Choo — have done.
Other veteran international players to join MLB in the last five years include Masataka Yoshida, Seiya Suzuki, Yusei Kikuchi, Yuki Matsui, Yoshi Tsutsugo and Shintaro Fujinami.
So now the question is this: should a player with as much professional experience as Imanaga and Yamamoto last year be considered a “rookie?”
Major League Baseball’s definition of a rookie is as follows:
A player shall be considered a rookie unless he has exceeded any of the following thresholds in a previous season (or seasons):
- 130 at-bats or 50 innings pitched in the Major Leagues.
- 45 total days on an active Major League roster during the Championship Season (excluding time on the Injured List).
The easy answer to the above question is obviously, yes, these players are rookies by letter of the law, so the better question is, should they be rookies or should there be a rule change?
Let’s go the dictionary!
Per Merriam-Webster: “A first-year participant in a major professional sport.”
Hmm. That’s murky.
Players in the minor-leagues are participants in a professional sport. Yes, they are professionals because they get paid, albeit not nearly as handsomely as MLB players. But the word “major” is in there. We can carve out the minor-leaguers because they aren’t major-leaguers.
Some might say the pertinent question here is whether NPB or KBO or Cuban National Series are considered “major,” I guess.
Perhaps we’re thinking too hard, though.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that Imanaga and Yamamoto came to Major League Baseball last season with experience in a major professional sport.
But!
It was their first year in Major League Baseball and MLB is a major professional sport.
One would be forced to go to great lengths to explain which players should be excluded from Rookie of the Year voting among first-year players in Major League Baseball.
Are we supposed to decide based on age? There are MLB rookies who toiled in the minors until in their 30s. Do they not count now?
Do we use years of professional experience? Again, deal with the minor-leaguers who didn’t get the big promotion until eight years into their professional careers.
Do we try and decide some leagues count more than others? So NPB players with at least, say, five years of experience don’t get rookie status but KBO or Cuban players do?
It’s all pretty silly, right?
Some incredible mental gymnastics would be required to argue a player like Imanaga, Yamamoto or, in 2025, Sasaki shouldn’t be considered an MLB rookie.
A litany of adjustments need to be made by any rookie looking to make his mark in Major League Baseball and even more will be needed in order to make a relatively lengthy career out of his stint. This is true regardless of whether the player came from the minor leagues or anywhere internationally.
A first-year MLB player is a rookie, period.
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