by Cary Osborne
The exhale made by Roki Sasaki when he walked off the Tokyo Dome mound in the third inning on Wednesday is a lasting image of his Major League debut.
There was a lot of good — a quick first inning, an electric four-seamer, a slider that surprised. And there were some difficulties. The command wasn’t consistent — particularly with his world-class splitter.
But making his Major League debut against the Chicago Cubs in his home country made for a hot spotlight.
No, this wasn’t a no-hitter or even five shutout innings for the №1 prospect in all of baseball. Nor was it expected to be — despite enormous long-term expectations for the 23-year-old. But for the short term, it was a building block.
The right-hander, in his highly anticipated Dodger debut, left after three innings with his team leading. He allowed one run, one hit, five walks and struck out three. The Dodgers eventually won 6–3.
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“The velocity was good. But I thought (with) the command, I think the emotions, the adrenaline was hard to rein it in,” said manager Dave Roberts. “But in that third inning, he made some big pitches for us.”
“It was a good nervousness,” Sasaki said. “I think it was a really excellent environment created by the Japanese fans and an environment that’s unique to Japan. I think it will be very different from what it will be like in the United States. So I think it was a really good thing to be able to pitch in front of the fans in Japan.”
The Dodgers — consistent with their long-view approach — let the Major League rookie get his feet wet in the big leagues on Wednesday with many months and many key games ahead in Sasaki’s season. The stress of throwing at such a high velocity and the five walks made three innings enough in his debut.
Even in Sasaki’s introductory press conference on Jan. 22, he proclaimed that his goal was to make the Dodgers’ Major League roster — showing his one-step-at-a-time mindset.
With an abundance of arms to deploy, the Dodgers didn’t need length out of Sasaki. They just needed him to keep them in position to win.
He did that.
Sasaki threw 56 pitches. Two registered triple digits and another three rounded up to 100 mph. He threw 31 balls — 16 in a laborious third inning when he walked three batters in a row.
The third walk brought in a run and kept the bases loaded with one out.
Sasaki recovered. He struck out the next two batters to get out of the inning with the Dodgers up 3–1.
“(When) you have a young player who doesn’t have a lot of experience and with a lot of talent, there’s going to be variance,” Roberts said. “And so the highs are going to be highs. And when he’s not commanding it, it gets a little bit tricky. But at the end of the day, his talent, his compete showed through.”
The splitter couldn’t find the strike zone (just one out of 15 pitches) on Wednesday and couldn’t entice the Cubs to swing at it out of the zone enough (just twice).
But the slider, his third pitch, earned three strikes out of the four times he threw it.
Sasaki was behind 2–1 to Cubs designated hitter Seiya Suzuki in the first inning when he snuck the breaking ball into the inner half of the plate for a called strike. Suzuki was caught off guard. Back in the count, Sasaki struck Suzuki out swinging two pitches later for the first K of what is expected to be an impactful season and Major League career.
But one step at a time.
And his first Major League game goes with this most important stat — a Dodger win.
Roki Sasaki lays down his first Major League building block was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.