Over the last several weeks, Roki Sasaki has been making minor improvements.
On Sunday at Angel Stadium, it finally led to impressively tangible results.
In a 10-1 win over the Angels, Sasaki delivered a seven-inning, one-run gem that helped the Dodgers complete a decisive weekend sweep in this three-game Freeway Series, easily turning in the best start of his young MLB career.
It was the first time as a big leaguer that the 24-year-old phenom pitched past the sixth inning. He not only set a personal high with eight strikeouts but also did so while walking zero batters, another career first as a starter in the majors.
Granted, dominating the lowly Angels these days is like beating your little brother in a driveway basketball game. Dunking on them — or shoving like Sasaki did Sunday — is no grand achievement against their slumping offense.
The way Sasaki did it, however, offered the most encouraging signs yet of the slow progress he has been making.
He got ahead in the count (69 of his 91 pitches were strikes). He limited hard contact (snapping a six-start streak of allowing a home run). And when he had the chance to put hitters away, his reworked pitch mix allowed him to do so with ease.
It helped that Sasaki spent most of the day nursing a big lead, after the Dodgers (29-18) scored two runs in the top of the second and exploded for a five-run rally two innings later.
But for a team battling a wave of pitching injuries and looking for length out of its starters to protect a bullpen that has taken on a bigger recent workload, Sasaki took the kind of strides that the Dodgers have long been waiting to see.
What it means
For perhaps the first time since he arrived from Japan last year, Sasaki looked exactly the way a reliable big-league starter should.
And given the star pitchers the Dodgers have on the injured list, not a moment too soon, either.
It wasn’t long ago, remember, Sasaki’s place in the Dodgers’ rotation was starting to look tenuous. But with Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell going down in the last couple weeks, he should now have a runway to build off Sunday’s success.
His most important task moving forward will be replicating the efficiency he finally found against the Angels. He didn’t have an inning that required 20 pitches. He was 19-for-24 on first-pitch strikes. And after allowing his lone run on a Yoán Moncada RBI single in the fourth, he faced the minimum number of batters over his final three frames.
Who’s hot
Much of Sasaki’s recent turnaround — he at least pitched into the sixth inning in each of his previous three outings — has come as a result of two key factors.
The first: He is locating his fastball in the zone consistently, throwing it over the plate more than 80% of the time Sunday.
The other: His new pitch mix has made him less predictable, with the addition of a new splitter, to go along with his trademark forkball, giving his game a new dynamic.
Against the Angels, it led to more swings-and-misses (18) than he had ever before generated as an MLB pitcher. He also got batters to chase out of the zone 40% of the time.
Again, time will tell how much that was due to Sasaki himself, or the fact that he was facing such a miserable Angels lineup; which has averaged fewer than three runs per game during a current 5-21 free fall.
Then again, he became the first Dodgers pitcher other than Shohei Ohtani to go seven innings with two runs or fewer since Glasnow tossed eight scoreless April 23.
Who’s not
The Angels were betting on Grayson Rodriguez’s upside when they acquired him in a trade for outfielder Taylor Ward this offseason.
But in his injury-delayed team debut Sunday, he looked helpless against the Dodgers’ resurgent lineup.
The turning point in his 3 ⅔-inning, seven-run start came with two on and two outs in the fourth, when he was slow covering first base on a two-out grounder from Hyeseong Kim that allowed the inning to continue.
The four at-bats that followed: a two-run single from Ohtani (who went 3-for-5), a walk from Freddie Freeman (which loaded the bases again), a two-run single from Andy Pages (putting him back in the MLB lead for RBIs with 41 this season) and then, after Rodriguez was removed from the game, another RBI single from Kyle Tucker (who ultimately finished the day with three hits and three runs driven in).
Just like that, the Dodgers led 7-0.
The way Sasaki was pitching, it would be more than enough.
Up next
The Dodgers renew their recently heated rivalry with the Padres on Monday in San Diego, opening the series with Yoshinobu Yamamoto (3-3, 3.60 ERA) on the mound and a one-game lead in the NL West standings (pending the outcome of the Padres’ Sunday game against the Mariners).
