Dodgers' Roki Sasaki offers glimpse of tantalizing potential in anticipated spring training debut

GLENDALE, Ariz. — It’s not too often that a sellout crowd is in attendance to see a pitcher who's not starting, but that was the case Tuesday as the world waited to watch Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki make his spring training debut for the Los Angeles Dodgers against the Cincinnati Reds. It has been a slow ramp-up to game action for Sasaki, who signed a minor-league deal with the Dodgers over the winter. After pitching in a simulated game last week, he got his first taste of game action under the lights at Camelback Ranch.

“He was great,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said postgame. “It was just one of those things that we're all kind of waiting to see how he manages his emotions under the lights. First big-league game. I thought he was fantastic.”

You could see from the time his feet hit the mound that Sasaki was fired up in his first big-league outing, firing his first pitch at 99.2 mph and getting Reds third baseman Noelvi Marte to ground out to shortstop. After experiencing dips in his velocity last season in Japan, one of the questions for the 23-year-old righty this spring has been whether his upper-90s velocity would return. The 25 fastballs Sasaki threw during his outing Tuesday averaged 98 mph.

“Combination of both [adrenaline and mechanics],” Sasaki said through an interpreter when asked about his velocity in his debut. “Really worked hard in the lab, peeked into the mechanical aspect of my form and looked at things that I do well and things I wasn't doing well and was able to really work on things I wanted to, and I feel like I had a pretty good foundation.”

It wasn’t all smooth sailing for Sasaki, who allowed a base hit and hit a batter in his first inning of work and even pulled a few fastballs out of the zone. But as his manager was hoping to see, he was able to calm himself in those moments.

After a shaky start to his first inning against big-league hitters, Sasaki began to showcase the electric stuff that has made the baseball world salivate since he was a teenager. The Japanese right-hander froze both TJ Friedl and Matt McLain on two-strike splitters to get out of the fifth-inning jam.

“I was a mixture of excitement and nervousness,” Sasaki said after his debut. “But once I was on the mound, I was able to focus and able to pitch.”

But Sasaki’s best inning was his final one, as he twirled an 11-pitch, 1-2-3 seventh. He capped off his introductory performance with a bang, striking out Carlos Jorge to finish the frame. The right-hander tossed three scoreless innings, allowing just two hits with a walk, a hit by pitch and five strikeouts in the Dodgers' 4-2 win.

While the fastball velocity was apparent, Sasaki’s signature splitter was the pitch that really jumped out from his debut. He got seven swing-and-misses with the pitch.

“I think more than anything, it's just good for his confidence,” Roberts said. “I appreciate the fact that you can start that pitch in the strike zone, get swing-and-miss and have them honor that fastball, which they did. And I thought early on, you know, obviously there were some misfires in there. … but he really composed himself really well.”

A sold-out crowd showed up to see Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Roki Sasaki make his spring training debut against the Cincinnati Reds on Tuesday in Glendale, Arizona. (AP Photo/Darryl Webb)

All indications are that Sasaki, MLB’s No. 1 prospect according to MLB Pipeline, will appear in the Dodgers’ two-game series in his home country of Japan against the Chicago Cubs. But it’s still to be determined if he will start the second game of the series. Japanese right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who started Tuesday, will also get the ball for Game 1 in Tokyo.

The Dodgers will continue to be careful with their young right-hander as he completes his first spring training stateside. L.A. plans to keep him on a schedule of pitching once a week, similar to his schedule in Japan. The team’s slow ramp-up for Sasaki is in line with those of several of their other starting pitchers who are working back from injuries, including Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May, Clayton Kershaw and superstar Shohei Ohtani, who is likely to return to the mound in May.

One of the themes in Dodgers camp this spring has been keeping in mind that the Japanese phenom is not a finished product — something Sasaki has said about himself as he enters his first season in the States. While the excitement of his first appearance in Dodger blue was apparent, the team doesn’t want to put too much stock in one appearance.

But you can see exactly why every team in baseball wanted this pitcher.

“That's the best we've seen him [this spring],” Roberts said. “And you would expect that, given he's now really in compete mode. The adrenaline is real. And so we haven't seen 99 mph all spring, so we saw 99 and certainly a lot of swing-and-misses.”