Roki Sasaki’s 2025 campaign certainly wasn’t a conventional one.
Pegged as the top prospect in the sport, he ultimately signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He began the season as a starter — though a combination of injury and general ineffectiveness led to a lengthy stint away from the team in the Minor Leagues.
However, as the regular season came to a close, Sasaki was brought up to be a bullpen option — and that resulted in the young right-handed pitcher developing into the team’s best closer. Sasaki’s performances were both shocking and highly potent nature given what the earlier portion of the year looked like.
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Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic answered a question from a fan asking about what the team could take away from Sasaki’s postseason performance — along with whether that can translate to Sasaki being a starting pitcher.
“The biggest thing, along with health, the Dodgers can hope to bank on from Roki Sasaki’s midseason transformation is his mechanics. The cues they implemented to get him to use his lower half more were what was needed to get his velocity back to a place where his fastball couldn’t get crushed in the strike zone. That allowed Sasaki to be in the strike zone more often, which helped out his unique splitter.
“If the velocity is close to where it needs to be, then Sasaki at least has the building blocks for an effective starter, even if his new cutter doesn’t wind up being a viable pitch.”
All indications point to Sasaki being in the team’s starting rotation (barring a trade) along with Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, and Emmet Sheehan.
As Ardaya pointed out, the two-pitch arsenal is something that will be expanded. Sasaki relied primarily on a fastball-splitter combination during the postseason. As a starter, that will be expanded upon to include at least two more pitches.
Fortunately for the Dodgers and Sasaki himself, expectations likely will be lessened given the other members of the rotation. Sasaki in theory can ease himself into action without a ton of pressure while garnering valuable experience.
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Photo Credit: Kirby Lee/Imagn Images
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