The Los Angeles Dodgers acquired Roki Sasaki this offseason, intrigued by his dominant NPB stats but concerned about a drop in fastball velocity. Initially, Sasaki's MLB debut showcased a 4.72 ERA with fluctuating command, evidenced by 24 strikeouts against 22 walks over eight games. His average fastball velocity declined from 96.1 mph to 94.8 mph in recent outings. Both Sasaki and pitching coach Mark Prior discuss ongoing efforts to understand the velocity dip and its effect on command, highlighting the challenges of transitioning to MLB performance expectations.
Roki, everybody knows he throws 100. He's not throwing 100 with us. That's something that I think he was trying to train and get to it, which we tried to help as much as we could.
Just really still in this process of finding out what the root cause (is), working with my coaches, talking to people about this. I'm not quite exactly sure and can't really state exactly the single reason.
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