Roki Sasaki looks like ‘different animal’ in narrative-changing gem at Yankee Stadium

NEW YORK — Dave Roberts didn’t indulge the narrative.

But the clock was ticking on Roki Sasaki nonetheless.

This weekend, Blake Snell will begin a rehab assignment for the Dodgers. That means, within a month, the team will have to boot someone from its rotation to make room for his return.

Going into the All-Star break, the natural answer appeared to be Sasaki, who finished the first half of the season with a rotation-worst 5.33 ERA.

So, Roberts was asked Friday, how important would these next couple weeks be for Sasaki, as Snell gets close to making his return?

“Well, Snell is starting a rehab assignment, but I wouldn’t say he’s getting close,” Roberts said.

“Nice try,” the veteran manager then added with a sly grin.

Alas, it turned out no public pressure was needed for the 24-year-old phenom to finally turn a corner.

In the Dodgers’ 2-1 win over the Yankees on Friday night, Sasaki delivered his most promising outing as a member of the Dodgers’ rotation.

With his fastball playing up at a career-best 100.1 mph average, and his splitter coming out so deceptively that catcher Dalton Rushing joked, “I had trouble catching [it] for half the game, so that’s a pretty good sign,” Sasaki blew the Yankees’ lineup away in a 5 ⅔-inning gem that included only one unearned run.

“Very impressive,” Roberts said afterward. “Gosh, I mean, the velocity, he dialed it up.”

“That,” Rushing added, “was about as quality as we’ve seen him this year.”

Indeed, while Roberts might not have said so pregame, Sasaki desperately needed this.

A night in which he threw more 100 mph fastballs (21) than he had in the entirety of his career as an MLB starter previously (14). 

A night in which he went on the attack, put an opposing lineup on their heels and coupled his triple-digit velo (his 21 pitches of 100+ mph were also the most by any Dodgers pitcher since the league began tracking pitch speeds in 2008) with an assortment of swing-and-miss breaking stuff.

A night in which, finally, he looked every bit the part against a legitimate contending team; even if Aaron Judge remains sidelined with a rib injury.

“It’s one game, so I can’t say anything declarative,” Sasaki said in Japanese. “But it’s the lower body. I reviewed how I use that part, and I think that went well.”

This is what the Dodgers had expected to see when they signed the much-hyped Sasaki out of Japan last year. This is what they’d been waiting to see over his turbulent transition to the majors in the season and a half since.

Granted, as Sasaki noted himself, it was only one game. He has flashed potential before, only to quickly revert to inconsistent form.

Then again, in much the same way Yoshinobu Yamamoto leveled up in a Yankee Stadium start back in 2024, the Dodgers are hoping that Sasaki just did the same.

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In his postgame address with reporters, Roberts went so far as to make that comparison unprompted.

“It sort of reminded me of when Yamamoto was here a couple years ago, and that performance he put out, when the velocity and everything ticked up,” Roberts said. “It’s a good team over there, on the road, and to battle his emotions and go out there and put forth that effort that he did tonight was fun to watch. So, hopefully, he continues to build on that and keeps getting confidence.”

Sasaki’s stuff stood out from the get-go, highlighted by a tantalizing sequence against former MVP Paul Goldschmidt to punctuate a 1-2-3 first inning.

At the start of the at-bat, Sasaki pumped a 101.8 mph fastball over the plate for strike one. It was the hardest pitch he had thrown in the majors. After that, Sasaki climbed the ladder with a 101.7 heater that Goldschmidt fouled off. Three pitches later, Sasaki fanned him with a slider in the dirt.

“I got a big smile on my face when I saw 102,” said Roberts, who noted that Sasaki put in “a lot of work over the break” following his staggeringly inconsistent start to the campaign.

“I was upset I didn’t get an All-Star break,” Sasaki quipped, “so I unleashed that.”

The rest of the night, Sasaki kept on dealing, holding his 100 mph velocity while breezing through a five-hit, one-walk, five-strikeout performance.

He escaped a two-on, one-out jam in the third by inducing a double-play grounder from Ben Rice with a first-pitch splitter.

He bounced back from his lone run in the fourth, which only scored with the help of a couple defensive mistakes: Andy Pages letting a runner reach third on a double after dropping the ball in the outfield, and Rushing whiffing on a forkball for a run-scoring passed ball.

Unfazed, Sasaki continued to cruise, going blow-for-blow with former Cy Young winner Gerrit Cole before finally being removed at 94 pitches following a pair of singles in the sixth.

It only lowered his season ERA to 4.98 but encapsulated so much of the potential he has been trying to unlock.

“After that first inning … it was pretty exciting,” Roberts said. “With Roki, there’s times where he gives up a couple, then he settles down, or he’s good until he’s not. So today he was good all the way through.”

Remaining this good moving forward will be the challenge now, with Sasaki still needing to show more consistency with his delivery to cement a longer-term rotation spot.

Whether he can remains a question even Roberts couldn’t answer.

“I guess time will tell,” Roberts said. “I guess it’s in that bucket.”

But now, at least, he has given himself the perfect template to follow.

“I just go back to the conviction that he has,” Rushing said. “Watching him compete on the mound, there was a little bit of a different animal out there tonight.”