When you look at the Dodgers rotation, it is deep and it is loaded. Each pitcher can go out and give you a good chance to win a ball game. This does include Roki Sasaki. However, Sasaki is off to a rocky start into his MLB career and there are issues that have been a recurring theme in his first two starts to the season.

Roki Sasaki’s Issues Persist into Second Start

There is no denying that Roki Sasaki is a special talent. He brings a very mean velocity with his fastball, that is averaging 98 MPH in 2025 and also brings a vicious splitter that has insane break on that pitch and is able to really fool batters. When you actually take a look at his starts and what was going on in those starts, there are issues that have lingered.

To get a start in your home country is a true honor and it is a place where Sasaki performed well when it came to baseball. Adrenaline settled in and Sasaki threw multiple 100+ MPH pitches and even saw himself have his velocity top out at 100.5 MPH. He went very fastball heavy and mixed in his splitter. He was able to strike out three, but his control is what got the best of him.

Sasaki walked five batters in that outing, which is not great but it was his first big league start. Furthermore, he was not able to generate the swing and miss that you’d like to see with his arsenal. His fastball had a 13% whiff rate, which isn’t great given the number of times he threw the pitch. The Dodgers for that victory and improved to 2-0. Now that he got that out of the way, his first start in Dodgers Stadium awaited him.

Vibes were high for the Dodgers. They got their World Series rings and the team is off to a rocking 2-0 start in the series against the Tigers. Sasaki made his Dodgers debut and it was about as dreadful of a start as you could imagine.

Sasaki did not make it out of the second inning and pitched just 1.2 innings. He threw 61 pitches total and with 40 of them coming in the first inning. He managed to strike out two batters and generate six swing and misses, but control was all over the map with his outing.

Sasaki went on to walk four more batters, bringing his season total to nine. Of his 61 pitches, 32 went for strikes, which is almost half of his thrown pitches. That’s not ideal at all. He threw his fastball 33 times and only 16 were swung at. The damage he allowed was minimal and Dave Roberts was smart to get to the loaded bullpen.

Sasaki is a very good talent, but you can see there are things to work on and he’s far from a finished product. His control has been an issue to start the season and his ability to locate his pitches needs tuning.

No need to panic. But definitely worth note taking to begin 2025.