by Cary Osborne
Roki Sasaki said the right shoulder impingement that sent him to the injured list is similar to an injury he had in his final season in the Nippon Professional Baseball League last season.
If there’s a silver lining, here’s one:
“I did have something similar, but actually worse, and it was something that I was able to overcome and still perform,” Sasaki said on Wednesday.
Sasaki said the issue sprung up two outings ago — which would be May 3 in Atlanta. The prized Major League rookie’s four-seamer velocity was down 1.2 mph. It fell another 1.2 mph on May 9 in Arizona — a start in which he allowed five earned runs in four innings. Though Sasaki didn’t describe the issue as pain.
“It was just not the ideal way that I want my shoulders to move,” Sasaki said.
Scans revealed the shoulder impingement and Sasaki went on the injured list on Tuesday.
Manager Dave Roberts said on Tuesday that there wasn’t an expectation that Sasaki would go bell-to-bell this season. This stoppage — where Sasaki will not pick up a baseball for an undetermined amount of time — provides another potential benefit in that it resets the right-hander and gives his arm a break after the first quarter of the season (and not late in the season).
“I do feel like this is a good time to do that, so I want to make sure that I’m fully healthy and to be able to address anything that I had so that it leads to better performance,” Sasaki said.
Sasaki has made eight starts this season. He has a 4.72 ERA and 1.49 WHIP. His 5.9 walks per nine innings are far off the 2.0 average he had in the NPB.
Sasaki said he didn’t know if the shoulder injury affected his velocity and command. The time off will help him, he said, find out and get past it.
Roki Sasaki looks at time away as an opportunity for better performance down the line was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.