The Los Angeles have won the Lokisasaki sweepstakes this past offseason for many reasons, but perhaps most notably the “unspecified homework assignment” that deciphers why Sasaki’s fastball speed caused the season to drop in Nippomuro’s baseball.
With an almost ironic twist, one of his main issues in his rookie year in LA was his immersion of fastball speed.
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During Sasaki’s professional career in Japan, he dominated the strike zone with a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 5.74 in four years on NPB play and a 2.10 ERA.
Starting your MLB career is merely a sample size, but Sasaki has an ERA of 4.72 and 24 strikeouts walking in 22 games. On his last three outings, his average fastball speed was 96.1 mph, dropping to 94.8 mph on his latest two starts.
We didn’t see a strikeout from Sasaki at the start of Friday. His night ended with five run-of-5 hits in four innings, so he was allowed two walks and many home runs.
The 23-year-old tried to figure out what was going on with his heater.
“In this process of working with coaches and talking to people about what the root cause (IS) is, we’re still really in this process,” Sasaki said. “I’m not at all sure and can’t state exactly the single reason.”
Pitching coach Mark Pryor gave his own inference as to why his fastball speed from the phenom is a little lower than normal.
“Loki, everyone knows he’s throwing 100,” Prior said. “He’s not throwing 100 with us, that’s what I think he was trying to train and get to it. We tried to help as much as we could.
Command is what Sasaki appears to be struggling to start his MLB career, and if at times a few more miles are hindering it, perhaps the younger right-hander will have to learn to raise his command before he can speed up again.
One of the best parts of Sasaki’s sweepstakes is that he is only 23 years old. With the entry of his own agent, he is not a completed project, but he has the desire to continue his learning and return to NPB superstar in uniforms.
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Photo credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Immagn Image
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