LOS ANGELES — Maybe when he has exhausted all the firsts – first major-league start in Tokyo, first Dodger Stadium start – Roki Sasaki will settle down.
So far, though, the moments have been too big for the young right-hander – and the strike zone not big enough.
Sasaki retired just five of the 12 batters he faced, getting pulled in the second inning after demonstrating poor command for the second time in two big-league starts. But Sasaki signed with the MLB team most able to absorb his developmental misadventures. The Dodgers’ bullpen retired 21 of 24 batters in his wake and the offense went to work, handing the Detroit Tigers a 7-3 defeat Saturday night.
The Dodgers have started the season 5-0 for the first time since 1981 when they won their first six games.
Sasaki’s nerves were evident – he called it “a good nervousness” in Japanese – when he made his MLB debut in front of a packed Tokyo Dome. He lasted just three innings, walked five of 12 batters there as well and hit the strike zone with less than half of his 56 pitches.
Saturday was worse.
Sasaki needed 41 pitches just to get through the first inning. He walked two, including Trey Sweeney with the bases loaded, and gave up another run when Manuel Margot dribbled a hit halfway up the third base line, also with the bases loaded.
The 41 pitches were the most thrown in an inning by a Dodgers pitcher since Yoshinobu Yamamoto threw 43 in his disastrous MLB debut in Seoul last year.
When Sasaki walked two more batters in the second inning, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts ended his night early.
In Tokyo, Sasaki averaged 98 mph on his fastball and touched 101 mph. That velocity wasn’t evident against the Tigers. He averaged just 96.1 mph on his 33 fastballs, topping out at 96.9 mph. Only 21 of them found the strike zone, and the Tigers swung-and-missed at just two.
The drop in velocity might have been part of the reason the Tigers fouled off 13 pitches against Sasaki, including five by Sweeney during a 10-pitch at-bat that ended with his bases-loaded walk.
Sasaki’s much-hyped splitter has been no help. In his two starts, he has thrown 30 of them, but big-league hitters haven’t been fooled. The Cubs and Tigers swung at just six of the 15 and missed only twice.
So far, Sasaki has thrown 117 pitches in his big-league career. Only 57 found the strike zone, leading to 10 walks in just 4 ⅔ innings.
But the Tigers could push across just those two first-inning runs, then went silent against the Dodgers’ bullpen.
Freddie Freeman homered in the first inning, and Michael Conforto doubled in a run in the second inning to match the Tigers’ two-run headstart. After Tigers manager A.J. Hinch intentionally walked Shohei Ohtani with two outs and a runner on third in the fifth inning, Teoscar Hernandez drove in two runs with a double that gave the Dodgers the lead.
Will Smith added a solo home run in the sixth and Tommy Edman his third of the season in the seventh off former Dodger Kenta Maeda. Freeman added an RBI double.
The Dodgers have started the season 5-0 for the first time since 1981, when they won their first six games.