{"id":635345,"date":"2026-03-21T12:24:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T12:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/635345\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T12:24:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T12:24:23","slug":"dodgers-remain-patient-with-roki-sasaki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/635345\/","title":{"rendered":"Dodgers remain patient with Roki Sasaki"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roki Sasaki has struggled with command this spring training<\/a>, all while adding new pitches to his repertoire. The Dodgers have been exceedingly patient with the 24-year-old right-hander, insisting all spring that he will start the season in the starting rotation, rather than get optioned to the minors to continue his work in progress.<\/p>\n

Bill Plunkett at the Orange County Register talked with manager Dave Roberts and president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman about the plan for Sasaki<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s obviously a big gap between Triple-A and the big leagues,\u201d Friedman said. \u201cWith certain really talented young players that we really believe in, we think that last mile of player development is generally better served at the major-league level.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat said, even with our established guys it\u2019s one of continued player development. Now for some guys, that\u2019s more on the margins. For other guys there\u2019s more involved. But we believe very strongly that he is going to be a very successful major-league starter. Just how quickly that comes to be is a fair question. Obviously we\u2019re going to pour everything we can into making that happen sooner rather than later and we\u2019ll go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Friedman talked with Maddie Lee of the Los Angeles Times about a number of topics<\/a>, including organizational goals:<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t say our mindset is all that different. But obviously, when you\u2019re in a moment in time with an incredibly talented roster, I think the mindset is, \u2018Don\u2019t sit back on your heels, be aggressive, and don\u2019t be nonchalant about the opportunity that we have in front of us.\u2019 And so it\u2019s more the idea of pressing an advantage and being aggressive on that front.<\/p>\n

Santiago Espinal, who was selected to the Dodgers roster on Wednesday<\/a>, will earn a $2.5 million salary this season, per Fabian Ardaya at The Athletic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Alden Gonz\u00e1lez at ESPN wrote about how restrictions on pitcher usage constrain the potential of the World Baseball Classic<\/a>, and that the Olympics potentially providing a road map for moving the WBC to midseason wouldn\u2019t necessarily solve those restraints.<\/p>\n

Janie McCauley at Associated Press previews the National League West<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Major League Baseball on Thursday announced that Polymarket is now the league\u2019s official prediction market exchange, which is definitely a group of words that make complete sense together. Gabe Lacques at USA Today wrote about the potential pitfalls<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Manfred himself even has some control over the market.<\/p>\n

The No. 2 search result after \u201c2026 win totals\u201d on Polymarket is \u201cNew MLB (collective bargaining agreement) by Dec. 1?\u201d While Manfred has telegraphed a lockout by that date, the market believes there\u2019s a 49% chance a deal will be struck between MLB and the players\u2019 association by then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roki Sasaki has struggled with command this spring training, all while adding new pitches to his repertoire. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[628,5,51,1560,34819,75423,57,4,110,1552],"class_list":["post-635345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-andrew-friedman","tag-baseball","tag-cleveland-guardians","tag-dave-roberts","tag-goodyear-ballpark","tag-joe-camporeale-imagn","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-mlb","tag-roki-sasaki","tag-santiago-espinal"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116267165346271800","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}