Roki Sasaki is a week away from reporting to the Los Angeles Dodgers, who are scheduled to begin Spring Training in Arizona on February 10, when the Japanese star will have his first real taste of MLB.
Sasaki will have little time to get up to speed and warm up his arm, first, to demonstrate all the brilliance with which he arrived after the 400 innings he pitched in the Japanese Baseball League and, second, to achieve adequate physical preparation that will allow him to protect himself from injury and show his best pitches.
The Dodgers will be in charge of the Opening Day with the Tokyo Series on March 18 and 19 against the Chicago Cubs. Because it is in his country, Sasaki is a natural candidate to be a starter along with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, but it is a decision that has not yet been announced by manager Dave Roberts.
Roki Sasaki is far from reaching his ceiling
Regarding his quality, Los Angeles Times columnist Dylan Hernandez gave an opinion in his participation in the podcast Foul Territory, where he accepted that he has quality, but that at 23 years of age he still has a long way to go.
“In general terms, in Japan, as a pitcher pitches only once, they tend to let him go a little longer. This guy has pitched less than 400 innings. The experience gap is quite substantial, I think,” said Hernandez, adding that he is far from what other figures from Japan represent: “In my opinion, there are probably two other players from Japan who fit into that category: the first is Darvish, the second is Ohtani and this is the third.”
On the website Essentially Sports, they pointed out that Hernandez is not the only expert who thinks that Sasaki lacks experience, Dan O’Dowd, general manager of the Colorado Rockies, also expressed a similar opinion, considering that he is a pitcher in progress.
“What surprises me is that despite the fact that he has pitched 394 innings in Japan, I still see him as a work in progress. Well, look at him: his highest number of innings in a season has been 129. Physically, he seems to be nowhere near full maturity,” O’Dowd told MLB Network.