Roki Sasaki has an arm that was gifted to him from the heavens. That was never in question.
Whether Sasaki becomes the best pitcher in baseball, or even just a mainstay in the Dodgers rotation, will depend on a less tangible quality.
Two starts into his major league career, the 23-year-old Sasaki is in a position that is entirely unfamiliar to him.
He’s failing.
The golden boy of Japanese baseball is suddenly just another prospect, looking overwhelmed, as if he might not belong on the mound, as if he might not ever belong.
“If you have a lot of success, then you’re just not really used to some adversity,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
How will Sasaki respond? Will he crumble now that he’s playing at a level at which he can’t rely on his physical gifts to dominate his opponents? Or will he discover something within himself that players such as Clayton Kershaw and Shohei Ohtani discovered within themselves?
Nobody knows — not the front office that recruited him, not Roberts, not Sasaki. The only certainty is that Sasaki will make his next start in Philadelphia next week and not for the triple-A affiliate in Oklahoma City.
Sasaki made his second start Saturday night, and it was somehow worse than his first. He didn’t make it out of the second inning of a 7-3 victory over the Detroit Tigers at Dodger Stadium, his control problems even more pronounced than they were in his debut in Tokyo.
He recorded only five outs. He walked four. He was charged with three hits and two runs. Of 61 pitches, only 32 were strikes.
Sasaki was in obvious shock as he departed from the mound without handing the baseball to Roberts.
“It was not a disrespectful thing,” Roberts said. “It was more of, he’s trying to hear me, and then that was kind of it.”
Sasaki quickly went down the stairwell leading to the clubhouse, prompting Roberts to call him back to the bench. A Japanese television broadcast showed images of a red-eyed Sasaki watching the game. Sasaki denied he was crying or holding back tears.
As Roberts said, this was a new experience for Sasaki, who was a household name in Japan since he was in high school. While injuries kept him from pitching the required number of innings to win the Japanese equivalent of the Cy Young Award, he was dominant. Japanese hitters couldn’t touch his 100-mph fastball, even when they knew it was coming.
“He’s certainly upset, disappointed,” Roberts said. “But you gotta be a pro and get back to work. It’s not the first time that a starting pitcher has had two bad outings.”
Even though Sasaki walked five in three innings against the Chicago Cubs in his debut, Roberts was comforted by the fact that he didn’t have a history of command trouble.
Sasaki said he still was adjusting to the pitch clock and low-quality American baseballs.
“But there are other things too, I think,” he said in Japanese. “It’s not that I can’t perform the way I want because of one thing. I think there are many reasons.”
He said he had problems with his delivery, which resulted in a loss of command and diminished velocity. His fastball averaged 96.1 mph, down from 98 in his first start.
While Sasaki said he didn’t think he could “reach [my] ideal form right away,” he acknowledged the need for him to do his job as a starting pitcher and not overburden the bullpen as he did.
The underwhelming start to Sasaki’s major league career is of minimal consequence to the Dodgers. If Sasaki needs another two or three starts to get acclimated, the Dodgers can afford to give them to him. If he needs to spend time refining his delivery in the minor leagues, the Dodgers have the depth to cover his absence.
The Dodgers can win the World Series with or without him, and they have the luxury of treating him as a long-term project without compromising their championship ambitions.
Sasaki is the one with everything at stake.
Around this time last year, Bobby Miller was viewed as a star in the making. Miller didn’t have the season the Dodgers envisioned, as his performance declined and his health failed him. He started this season in triple A.