Tokyo Series: Roki Sasaki’s electric and erratic in highly-anticipated MLB debut

Rowan Kavner

MLB Writer

If you want to know why teams were so intrigued by Roki Sasaki’s potential, watch the first inning of his big-league debut.

If you want to know why the 23-year-old will be a work in progress in his first season in Major League Baseball, watch the rest.

Sasaki was electric early Wednesday evening at the Tokyo Dome, hitting 100 mph on the radar gun on each of his first three pitches before touching 101 mph in an efficient 11-pitch first inning, then erratic for the remainder of his three innings of work. He threw just 25 of his 56 pitches for strikes and walked five of the 12 batters he faced, one of which brought in the lone run he surrendered after he walked the bases loaded.

But he also buckled down when he needed to, getting back-to-back strikeouts to finish his debut and keep the lead intact in a 6-3 win.

Welcome to the Sasaki extravaganza.

Sasaki’s vaunted splitter is already an offering many evaluators have deemed one of the best in the league. In Cactus League play, it dazzled. On Tuesday in Japan, however, he struggled to command everything. Sasaki threw the splitter 15 times, but it induced just one called strike, one whiff and one ball in play as the Cubs consistently let it dart out of the zone.

Primarily a two-pitch starter, when he doesn’t have his top secondary offering going, teams can largely gear up for the fastball. That’s part of what made his escape act in the third inning interesting and intriguing.

Sasaki’s triple-digit heat and mesmerizing splitter should make him an effective pitcher immediately, but the development of a third pitch could take him to different heights. When he issued three straight walks to Ian Happ, Suzuki and Kyle Tucker in the third, he threw them nothing but fastballs and splitters. He couldn’t find the zone with either pitch.

Both the Dodgers‘ 3-1 lead — which came courtesy of a passed ball that scored a run, a Kiké Hernández sacrifice fly and a solo homer from NLCS MVP Tommy Edman, who continues to obliterate left-handed pitching — and Sasaki’s big-league debut were threatening to unravel.

Then, the young phenom out of Rikuzentakata, Japan, displayed the type of brilliance that has tantalized MLB scouts for years.

He started to find the outer edge of the plate with his fastball against Michael Busch, getting a called third strike for his second out. And with the Cubs still threatening, he went a new direction, turning to a slider to get rookie Matt Shaw swinging.

“The way he responded in that situation when he didn’t have his best command tonight, it speaks to how competitive he is,” manager Dave Roberts said.

Dodgers’ Roki Sasaki records first MLB strikeout in first inning vs. Cubs’ Seiya Suzuki

Overall, Sasaki said he was pleased with the outing, which came against a Cubs team that was among the many interested in his services after he went 29-15 with a 2.10 ERA and 11.5 strikeouts per nine innings in four years with the Chiba Lotte Marines. The Cubs were among eight teams who received a meeting with Sasaki, who was so highly sought after this winter not only because of his tremendous stuff but also the modest price tag that came with his international amateur status.

The Cubs, who traded for Tucker but spent modestly this winter, did not make the list of three finalists. The Dodgers, after more than six years coveting the “Monster of the Reiwa Era” and winning a World Series, did.

A year after devoting more than $1 billion to Shohei Ohtani, who reached base five times in the two-game sweep and delivered a parting gift to the crowd in Tokyo with a fifth-inning home run Wednesday, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who earned the Opening Day start Tuesday and spun five lights-innings of one-run ball in a 4-1 win, they won the battle for another Japanese-born sensation in Sasaki.

Sasaki, who received a $6.5 million signing bonus with his minor-league deal, was not as seasoned, polished or accomplished as Yamamoto when he made the jump from Nippon Professional Baseball, but his tools were inarguable, most obviously on display during a 19-strikeout perfect game when he was 20 years old. MLB teams saw a talent with a ceiling as high as any player in the game.

Injuries, however, limited his production and may have played a role in trimming some heat off his fastball a year ago. Facing MLB competition Wednesday, Sasaki said he was curious to see how they would react to his stuff. He recognizes he is not yet a finished product and that adjustments will need to take place. He wanted to find a team that would help him develop and realize his potential.

When Sasaki met with clubs this winter, he gave them a homework assignment, asking them how they would go about helping him retrieve his diminished velocity. Immediately, he has seen an improvement in that department. The speed of his triple-digit fastball was not a problem during the Tokyo Series, which he said felt more like an international tournament than an MLB debut.

The 25th anniversary of the first ever MLB regular season game in Tokyo was a showcase of the Japanese talent that has since moved stateside. Even Ohtani admitted to feeling nervous before the opener — not that it stopped him from performing. Ever the showman, coming off offseason shoulder surgery, he doubled in the first game and homered in the second.

Nothing he does surprises his manager anymore.

“Shohei just seems like a superhero,” Roberts said. “In the biggest of games or the biggest of moments, he seems to always deliver.”

In the first-ever Opening Day matchup between two Japanese-born starting pitchers, Yamamoto and Shota Imanage combined to allow just one run, though atypical free passes limited Imanaga’s evening to four innings. Both starters already established their value in their first season in the big leagues last year.

There was more fascination around Wednesday’s starter for the Dodgers.

Sasaki’s debut went much better than Yamamoto’s a year ago, when the highest-paid pitcher in baseball surrendered five runs in a disastrous one inning of work. It was not a harbinger of things to come for Yamamoto, who registered a 2.53 ERA in his other 17 starts and shined in the World Series.

Sasaki prevented his debut outing from going off the rails similarly. He got an inning-ending double-play lineout to work out of trouble in the second inning before using his elite stuff to extinguish a bases-loaded jam himself with back-to-back strikeouts in the third.

After an impressive Opening Day start, Roberts said he sees no reason why Yamamoto won’t be in the Cy Young conversation this season.

Equipped with an embarrassment of riches in their rotation, the Dodgers don’t need Sasaki to be that kind of star immediately.

But even in an imperfect debut, he offered glimpses of the stardom that could be ahead.

Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on X at @RowanKavner.