Everywhere Roki Sasaki looked Wednesday afternoon, curious eyes stared back at him.
Facing hitters for the first time in Dodgers camp this spring, and still just barely a month removed from his blockbuster signing with the team, the 23-year-old Japanese phenom was the center of attention at Camelback Ranch during the team’s latest round of live batting practice.
Dozens of teammates, coaches and club executives — including president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and general manager Brandon Gomes — crowded behind a screen just beyond home plate. Hundreds of fans, photographers and media members huddled around the perimeter of the field as the 6-foot-4 right-hander climbed atop the mound.
“When everybody wants this guy,” teammate Mookie Betts said of Sasaki, whose signing this winter was one of the Dodgers’ biggest offseason coups, “everybody’s going to watch him.”
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Over the 27 pitches that followed, little could be truly gleaned about the current state of Sasaki’s talented but raw repertoire, or how smoothly his transition to Major League Baseball might go this season.
But for one afternoon, the quiet, reserved rookie didn’t seem fazed by the attention, saying he felt no nerves in the first of many milestone moments that await him in his debut MLB season.
“I did feel that today went better than I felt in my bullpens,” Sasaki said through an interpreter afterward. “Facing hitters for the first time using a major league ball, and pitching in a game environment for the first time in a while, I was just sort of feeling out how it would go, getting used to being back in the flow of a game.”
In his live batting practice session, Sasaki faced eight hitters over two innings of work.
Twice, he recorded strikeouts, ringing up infielder David Bote (a six-year MLB veteran in camp on a minor-league deal) on a called third strike before fanning outfielder Eddie Rosario (another non-roster invite with 10 years of MLB experience) with his signature splitter on back-to-back pitches.
“The splitter moves a lot,” Rosario said. “I saw one move to the outside side, and one move to the inside side. It’s good.”
Twice, Sasaki gave up hits, with Bote and utilityman Tommy Edman roping line drives off a couple of fastballs.
“For his first live BP,” Bote said, “I don’t think it could’ve gone any better.”
Though Sasaki also mixed in a walk, he said he generally felt good with his command. And while he wasn’t sure of his exact fastball velocity — a point of emphasis in camp after it dropped from 98-99 mph earlier in his career to 96-97 mph in his final season in Japan last year — he believed it had improved from his bullpen sessions earlier in camp.
“I was excited to get in there and see what all his pitches moved like,” Edman said. “He’s got a good fastball obviously, everybody knows about. I was curious to see what his splitter did. It’s got a lot of movement, a lot of action on it. His stuff looks really good. I know it’s going to play at this level for sure.”
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How quickly Sasaki adapts to the majors is the bigger question facing him this year.
Though he was superb against a lesser level of competition in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league, posting a 2.10 ERA in four seasons to become one of the most coveted young pitchers in the world, he never made more than 20 starts in a single season — lacking the professional track record other Japanese imports, including Dodgers teammates Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, had when they made their move to the majors.
Also, while Sasaki wowed scouts with his occasional triple-digit fastball and highly touted splitter, he never fully settled on a complementary third pitch; a process that remains ongoing to this point of Dodgers camp.
“We are still searching,” manager Dave Roberts said of Sasaki’s third pitch. “I do think that seeing hitters will kind of help us figure out what direction to go with what should be his third pitch versus right or left.”
On Wednesday, Sasaki’s third weapon of choice was his slider, one that received mixed reviews from scouts during his time in Japan. Bote, a right-handed hitter, said he saw only fastballs and sliders from Sasaki. Edman, a switch hitter who was batting from the left side, also got one in his second trip to the plate, laying off a backdoor bender that stayed too far outside in an at-bat that ended in Sasaki’s only walk.
“It’s important, especially as a starter, to be able to have that third pitch you’re able to throw for a strike,” Edman said. “It looked like it had some good movement. I know a couple of the righties said they saw a few good ones, too. It’ll be definitely a very important pitch for him.”
The good news is much time remains before the start of the season. And though Sasaki is expected to be immediately thrust into big league action — he could make his regular-season debut in the second game of the team’s season-opening trip to Tokyo next month — the depth of the Dodgers’ starting rotation means he will have some margin for inevitable growing pains.
That’s why, on Wednesday, Dodgers personnel were less worried about seeing pristine execution from their newest Japanese star.
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“I’m just trying to guard against [him] trying to be Cy Young on the first day of live batting practice,” Roberts joked, “which no one is expecting.”
“It’s practice, who cares?” Betts added bluntly. “If he shoved, it’d be a story. If he didn’t shove, it’d be a story. No matter what, we’ll see when we start in Tokyo.”
Instead, the team simply was looking to see how comfortable Sasaki looked in his new environment. And as he walked off the field after his outing — having chatted with everyone from Friedman to Roberts to new teammate Blake Snell during the course of the session — Sasaki confidently strolled through his new reality, a satisfied look planted on his face.
“Just to come out and throw a live BP with like 50 people literally right behind you, that takes guts,” Bote said of Sasaki. “So the fact that he went up and showed really what he’s about and how he can pitch and how he’s going to be able to handle all this … it speaks volumes of who he is as a makeup and character guy.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
