Dodgers’ trust in Roki Sasaki a big leap of faith: ‘Expect it to get better’

Last Tuesday, during the Dodgers’ final preseason exhibition game against the Angels at Dodger Stadium, manager Dave Roberts got up from his perch at the top step of the dugout and went to find Roki Sasaki.

To most outside observers, Sasaki had just suffered a five-alarm, red-flag, siren-sounding sort of spring training.

His ERA was 15.58. He’d walked 15 batters in just 8 ⅔ innings. The night before, he’d reached a new low in issuing six walks and hitting two batters during a final spring outing that left his mechanics looking broken.

And suddenly, even his usually unflappable confidence seemed to be somewhat shot.

So, during the third inning of Tuesday’s game, Roberts walked over to talk to the 24-year-old phenom at the far end of the dugout for several minutes.

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He grabbed Sasaki’s shoulder, patted his chest, and –– while speaking to him through the assistance of an interpreter –– even coaxed a brief smile on the downtrodden starlet’s face.

The scene represented one of several “check-ins” that Roberts, his coaching staff and other Dodgers personnel have had with Sasaki leading up to his regular-season debut Monday night against the Cleveland Guardians.

For better or worse, the right-hander remained in the team’s opening day rotation, despite his horrific spring numbers and a poor 4.72 ERA in eight starts as a rookie at the start of the last year (when, granted, he was pitching through a shoulder problem).

So, amid ongoing work on his inconsistent delivery, the club has also been trying to keep his confidence up; both in their conversations with him directly, and in their public comments about him more broadly.

“I was just checking in on him, checking to see how he was doing,” Roberts said Friday, after another chat with Sasaki during early on-field work that afternoon. “He looks great. He’s in a good spot.”

That, at least, is all the Dodgers can hope for at this point –– as they take a gigantic leap of faith that Sasaki’s regular-season form will be totally transformed from how he looked this spring.

It’s hard to imagine many other pitchers surviving the camp Sasaki just suffered.

He dealt with a flurry of mechanical flaws, citing everything from lower-body sequencing to upper-body alignment to over-pronation of his wrist as root causes for his struggles. He still looked to be very much in a developmental phase of his career arc, trying to add a third pitch and dial in any semblance of command. And he doesn’t have much MLB experience to fall back on as a crutch, especially in a starting role.

So why exactly are the Dodgers handing him the ball Monday night?

“He’s done it on the biggest stage, in front of 50,000, so we know it’s in there,” general manager Brandon Gomes told the California Post last week. “Now it’s just getting him in rhythm and consistently syncing up pitches.”

True, Sasaki did have starring moments last October, when he returned from his long-term shoulder injury to become the team’s surprise closer in the playoffs, posting an 0.84 ERA in nine appearances with three saves and two holds.

That experience showed the Dodgers that, when Sasaki is simply in “compete mode” and consistently attacking the strike zone, he already has the ability to dominate big-league hitters.

Their bet now is that the onset of the regular season will draw that out of him again; that his spring performance, for all its ugly warts, was mostly just a symptom of an exhibition environment.

“The really encouraging part is where the velocity is, and the splitter has been really good,” Gomes said. “Execution has come and gone, but the new breaking ball has shown a lot of promise and really good feel for it. So, a lot of the components are there. Now, I think it’s just about syncing it up and going into attack mode more often. Getting out there and really trusting his ability.”

That’s where chats like the ones Roberts had with Sasaki last Tuesday –– or, similarly, the one pitching coach Mark Prior struck up while sitting crossed-legged with the pitcher in the outfield grass earlier that afternoon –– have factored into the equation.

“I believe in him, I really do,” Roberts said last week. “So for me, I’m going to keep pouring into him, like our staff is, and expect it to get better.”

The big question, of course, is what happens if it doesn’t.

Gomes maintained that the idea of sending Sasaki to the minors “hasn’t even entered our minds” at this stage, after being asked about the pitcher’s quote last week saying he’d be “fine” with a demotion if the club deemed it necessary.

A return to the bullpen is out of the question right now, too, with the Dodgers promising Sasaki last October he would return to a starting role following his cameo as postseason closer.

Something would have to give, of course, if Sasaki continues to pitch as he did in the spring. Starts of 2-3 innings and 4-5 walks won’t be tenable for a Dodgers team trying to avoid overloading its bullpen the way it did a season ago.

For now, however, team officials are expecting wholly different results –– or at least insisting so with their public campaign of support.

“Even earlier last year, when he was pitching through injuries, he was finding ways to keep us in the game,” Gomes noted, with the Dodgers indeed going 6-2 in his injury-hampered 2025 starts. “So there’s a lot of stuff that’s really encouraging, knowing the make-up, the stuff and the competitor that he is.”

With a straight face, Gomes then added a claim sure to draw eye rolls from anyone who watched Sasaki this spring. 

“There’s not a whole lot of concern at this point,” he said. “We’re very focused on just getting him out there and helping us win games here.”

Entering Monday’s season debut, whether he can remains anyone’s guess.