{"id":766209,"date":"2026-07-31T11:18:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T11:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/766209\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T11:18:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T11:18:20","slug":"roki-sasakis-recent-dominance-is-proving-the-dodgers-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/766209\/","title":{"rendered":"Roki Sasaki’s recent dominance is proving the Dodgers right"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Long-term experiments demand resources, which is why the Dodgers<\/a>\u2019 lab is perfect for the Roki Sasaki project.<\/p>\n

Funding is no issue. Time is no object. Pressure is a privilege and so is patience.<\/p>\n

And when the Dodgers set out to prove a hypothesis \u2014 Roki Sasaki<\/a> can be a \u201cCy Young-caliber\u201d starting pitcher, as general manager Brandon Gomes<\/a> has suggested \u2014 they did it with the luxury of seeing the project all the way through, until they\u2019ve been proved right.<\/p>\n

And most everyone else, wrong.<\/p>\n

No, Sasaki didn\u2019t need to be moved to the bullpen.<\/p>\n

No, Sasaki didn\u2019t need to be sent back down to the minor leagues.<\/p>\n

No, Sasaki wasn\u2019t going to be a bust.<\/p>\n

Yes, the Dodgers knew exactly what they were doing by continuing to trot out the 24-year-old right-hander, providing him with the big league education they promised.<\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s test ran 5\u2153 innings, and Sasaki \u2014 with his bigger glove and harder splitter \u2014 held the Seattle Mariners at bay until the sixth inning, when they scored their only two runs in a game the Dodgers won 6-2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For the fourth straight start, Sasaki performed like the pitcher who was promised when he picked the Dodgers<\/a> 18 months ago, trusting them to develop him into a starting star.<\/p>\n

Tack on another win to three consecutive he\u2019d previously recorded, against the Colorado Rockies, New York Yankees and New York Mets.<\/p>\n

In his past four starts, Sasaki (5-5) has struck out 26 batters, walked seven and has a 2.25 ERA and 3.44 FIP in 24 innings.<\/p>\n

Man alive, the Dodgers have done it! \u201cThe Monster of the Reiwa Era\u201d is breaking out. And the rest of baseball should probably be terrified.<\/p>\n

\"Teammates <\/p>\n

Teammates congratulate Roki Sasaki as he\u2019s pulled from the game by Dodgers manager Dave Roberts in the sixth inning Thursday against the Seattle Mariners.<\/p>\n

(Gina Ferazzi \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a tough league,\u201d catcher Dalton Rushing<\/a> said. \u201cYou have to have confidence and if you don\u2019t have confidence, it\u2019s hard to be successful. I think that\u2019s all it was. He lacked a little bit of confidence early on. And as soon as he had that runway to kind of allow himself to be himself, you\u2019ve seen the best out of him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Progress isn\u2019t linear. But it\u2019s been undeniable.<\/p>\n

As a much-hyped rookie last season, Sasaki didn\u2019t step right in as a permanent part of the Dodgers\u2019 starting rotation. He had health issues and crises of confidence. And he had to acclimate to a culture far from his home in Japan, and to do it with his baseball-mad country following along closely.<\/p>\n

All while playing under the Dodgers\u2019 high-powered microscope. (Ask Kyle Tucker<\/a>, a 29-year-old, English-speaking American, how challenging it\u2019s been.)<\/p>\n

Then, in the postseason, Sasaki became a not-so-secret secret weapon out of the bullpen in the Dodgers\u2019 successful World Series defense. A step forward in relief, and then, as a sophomore starter, several steps back.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

This spring training, Sasaki posted a 15.58 ERA and allowed 15 walks in 8\u2154 innings. He looked lost \u2014 like, I thought, someone whose too-often dejected body language told us the glare of Dodger Stadium\u2019s bright lights would do more damage than help.<\/p>\n

I felt bad for the young man, felt he should get to fix his issues in the minors. I doubted his fortitude.<\/p>\n

To start the regular season, Sasaki was shaky. He struggled with command. Failed to get out of the fifth inning in his first three starts. And the appeals began for the Dodgers to sign Sasaki up for duty in the \u2018pen.<\/p>\n

But the Dodgers (69-40) didn\u2019t seem to consider it.<\/p>\n

Why would they? They\u2019re incentivized to see this trial all the way through, because of what it says about them as a developmental destination. As the club that pushes the right buttons. That can figure out how to help top talent figure it out.<\/p>\n

A lower-half mechanical change over the All-Star break helped the 6-foot-2 Sasaki\u2019s retooled splitter regain its movement and his fastball its heat; he hit or eclipsed 100 mph six times Thursday.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Also, a noticeably larger glove seems to have helped him curb his habit as an overly generous tipper. They thought he might have been inadvertently cluing in opponents with his movements on the mound \u2014 now they\u2019ve found a way to better hide them, though neither Sasaki nor manager Dave Roberts<\/a> want to credit the leather for this recent breakthrough.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not the glove,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cI think it\u2019s just more of even the second half, when he came out that first start, you just saw that I think he just kind of decided that it\u2019s time to go and finish strong. It\u2019s a new half, it\u2019s a new beginning. And you\u2019ve seen a different player, you know, to be quite honest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot more confidence … I use that word \u2018conviction\u2019 a lot, and there\u2019s a lot of conviction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because it\u2019s not the size of a glove on a man, right? It\u2019s his heart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long-term experiments demand resources, which is why the Dodgers\u2019 lab is perfect for the Roki Sasaki project. Funding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2406],"tags":[5,94760,18357,85133,39,2600,94761,1987,10833,1165,4332,4333,774,57,3224,4331,4,1834,110,8842,1373,2564,6272,21],"class_list":["post-766209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-baseball","tag-big-glove","tag-confidence","tag-conviction","tag-dodgers","tag-era","tag-hard-splitter","tag-inning","tag-issue","tag-la","tag-la-dodgers","tag-ladodgers","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-losangeles","tag-losangelesdodgers","tag-mlb","tag-movement","tag-roki-sasaki","tag-sasaki","tag-start","tag-step","tag-thursday","tag-way"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117014318928821279","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766209","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=766209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}