The Japanese phenom will join countrymen Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto in blue, but this addition isn’t about the Dodgers bludgeoning the rest of the sport with their financial might.

For some teams in Major League Baseball, the chase for Roki Sasaki could not be measured in mere months. It lasted for years. One of those teams, the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers, concluded that pursuit on Friday night by landing the star pitcher from Japan.