Los Angeles Dodgers starting pitcher Roki Sasaki had his first start of the season on Monday, March 30, and it was a lot more positive than his previous outings.
Sasaki came into the season with a run of alarming Spring Training starts, losing total command of his fastball and failing to throw a consistent diet of strikes.
He would end up being pulled from the game and reinserted come the next inning, having more success, but his performances were not sustainable for a team looking to defend its back-to-back titles.
He allowed just one run, four hits, and two walks with four strikeouts over four innings of work. Sasaki threw 78 pitches with nine whiffs and 11 called strikes.
However, against the Cleveland Guardians, Sasaki looked much more stable and comfortable on the mound.
More notably, Sasaki’s new pitch, a cutter he had been working on all offseason, accounted for half of his strikeouts.
He did allow two hits with his cutter, but it seemed to work well for him overall as a third pitch with lateral movement as opposed to the vertical spin of his killer splitter.
Dalton Rushing breaks down the cutter
Catcher Dalton Rushing, who was behind the dish for Sasaki’s season debut, made it clear that the cutter is still in its early stages, but he was excited about what it could add to the pitcher’s arsenal.
“It’s still new. We don’t truly know how we want to use it just yet. All we know is that it’s something off the fastball, and the more he throws it in the zone, it makes his fastball that much better,” Rushing said of Sasaki’s cutter.
“But like I said, we haven’t seen it enough to really know exactly how we’re going to treat it with hitters. But I thought he did a really good job tonight. It was a big step for me.”
Sasaki has a long way to go before he’s viewed with confidence, but his first start is a step forward and should give him a platform to build on.
A starter needs to have more than two pitches, and if his cutter is truly part of his arsenal, he could start reaching his potential sooner rather than later.
