Dodgers’ Roki Sasaki shows ‘growth’ in 2026 debut after disastrous spring training

When the Los Angeles Dodgers inked right-hander Roki Sasaki coming out of Japan during the 2024-25 offseason, it seemed like Major League Baseball’s current powerhouse franchise had added yet another premium talent to the fold and yet another future star making the leap from NPB.

However, Sasaki’s rookie season didn’t go as hoped. Across eight starts and two relief appearances for the Dodgers last season, Sasaki pitched to a 4.46 ERA with 28 strikeouts and 22 walks in 36 ⅓ innings and a grisly FIP of 5.80. He also missed major time with a shoulder impingement and struggled badly in Triple-A as he worked his way back from injury. Sasaki returned in time to be a bullpen weapon for Dave Roberts in the playoffs as the Dodgers completed their repeat bid. But he wasn’t signed to all that ballyhoo to be a reliever. The Dodgers want him to be a long-term fixture at the front of the rotation.

This spring continued the trend of disappointment. Across four Cactus League starts, Sasaki had a 15.58 ERA with 15 walks in 8 ⅔ innings. Overall, he allowed 26 of the 52 batters he faced during spring training to reach base. Across those innings and during 2025, Sasaki has struggled to maintain his mechanics and repeat his delivery, which has, among other issues, hurt him at the command-and-control level.

That’s all prelude to Sasaki’s first start of the 2026 regular season. In an eventual 4-2 loss to the Guardians — the Dodgers’ first defeat of the season — the 24-year-old Sasaki put up the following line: 

And the moving pictures:

Of his 78 pitches, 45 went for strikes. Encouragingly, Sasaki’s fastball sat at 98 mph, and he topped 99 mph with it on multiple occasions. He also earned a 60% whiff rate on swings taken against his splitter, which still profiles as his best wipeout offering. That’s particularly encouraging, as Sasaki typically uses the splitter as a strike-to-ball pitch designed to get chase swings. Sasaki also got good results with his reworked cutter-slider hybrid. 

“That’s growth,” Roberts said after the game, via MLB.com. “I know he was a little bit nervous going into this start about what to expect. … But he responded well.”

To be sure, there’s no such thing as a gem in which the starting pitcher lasts four innings against what figures to be one of the weaker offenses in MLB. However, in the full light of Sasaki’s brutal spring and failure to launch in 2025, it’s a highly encouraging outing.

As the Dodgers push for the historically elusive three-peat in 2026, one major concern — a ubiquitous concern in Dodger Land, it seems — will be the health of the rotation. There’s depth on paper, but so many of their rotation arms are either laid up right now or have histories that suggest they will be at some point. If Sasaki can emerge as a viable fixture in an MLB rotation, then they’ll of course be much better off. If he can tap into the ace potential that the Dodgers and so many other clubs saw in him two winters ago, then he’ll erase any memories of his struggles. The first step toward some or all of that was his first start of the season — a somewhat forgettable one at first blush but a very meaningful one in Sasaki’s specific case. 

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