Dodger Details: Calculating Roki Sasaki's progress, waiting on a star and more

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One charitable way to describe his season thus far: uneven. “I think there are a lot of positives and also a lot of things that I need to work on and clear up,” Sasaki said through interpreter Kensuke Okubo. The four innings Sasaki threw in the Dodgers’ 5-2 loss were eventful. Half of the 22 batters he faced either struck out or drew a walk. So many of the same bugaboos that have marred his transition into a starter — inconsistent fastball command, too many negative counts and a lack of feel for his signature forkball — are still massive problems. The career-best six strikeouts showed that Sasaki’s stuff plays when it’s in the zone. The five walks showed he wasn’t in the zone nearly enough. “I think the swings that he’s gotten on his splitters, the uncomfortable at-bats that you’ve seen with the fastball, the cutter mix, it’s really showing how good his stuff is once he gets ahead,” catcher Dalton Rushing said. “But it’s all going back to just getting behind.” Sasaki did often, falling behind 13 times against 22 hitters. That made life difficult on himself. Each inning invited disaster, as he allowed at least one baserunner in all four innings and had multiple baserunners in three of those frames. It took him 30 pitches, including a mound visit and a desperation ball-strike challenge from Rushing to get through the third inning with just two runs against him. He didn’t completely implode, which the Dodgers took as a positive. It was a minor miracle that he only allowed two runs. (Another minor miracle: the Dodgers only lost by three runs on a day where they made as many miscues as they did on the mound, in the field, at the plate and on the bases). Manager Dave Roberts saw Sasaki’s successful high-wire act as a sign of growth. He didn’t completely fall apart at the seams, as he did often during his miserable spring training. “He didn’t let it spin out of control,” Roberts said. The Dodgers have done their part to try to manage expectations with Sasaki. He is a far cry from the version of himself that was one of the top pitching prospects in the sport, but the organization has insisted that the place for him to develop right now is in the big leagues. They see enough flashes of Sasaki at his best, and are talented enough to overcome him at his worst. Still, Sasaki has a 6.23 ERA through three regular season starts. His first 11 starts as a big leaguer have yielded a 5.13 ERA. He’s pitched into the fifth inning just once this year, tasking the Dodgers with covering five innings after he left Sunday’s game. “My goal is kind of, go deeper in the game a little more,” Sasaki said. That starts with simply throwing more strikes, which could come down to more than just being able to command the ball. “When it gets really hit, gets stressful, then he finds a way to make pitches,” Roberts said. “So how do you get ahead of that and not let an inning get built? That’s what the great ones do. And I think if you look back at today, and even a lot of his outings, there’s some bad walks in there. Guys that you have to go after, and force them to put the ball in play. And he’s been victim to that.” It took 10 minutes for the Dodgers to gain an early advantage on Sunday. For as accomplished as Shohei Ohtani and Jacob deGrom have been through their big league careers, this was the first time the two had actually squared off. The meeting lasted one pitch, as Ohtani cranked the first pitch he saw in the first inning 138 feet into the air and 374 feet from home plate for the Dodgers star’s second leadoff home run in as many days. It is difficult to muster multiple good at-bats against even a 37-year-old deGrom. That remains true. “I liked the first at-bat,” Roberts deadpanned later, after deGrom didn’t yield any more damage over six dominant innings. All Shohei needed was one pitch! pic.twitter.com/nyuCiJSTaT — Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) April 12, 2026 The Dodgers boast the best offense in the major leagues right now, even after being held to two runs on Sunday. Their 6.07 runs per game leads the bigs. If the 2026 Dodgers were a singular hitter, their MLB-best 144 wRC+ would mirror the 2025 marks of Ketel Marte and Pete Alonso. This, while still trying to get their best production from their stars. Ohtani (who was not made available to reporters Sunday) has gotten on base in 45 straight games dating back to last regular season, but said this week he’s still looking to get his swing in the right place. Freddie Freeman added to his tally of hard-hit fly balls caught at the warning track in the eighth inning; there’s a gulf between his expected metrics and his still-solid counting stats that Dodgers officials have playfully ribbed Freeman about early on. Mookie Betts isn’t even in the lineup as he recovers from an oblique strain. The Dodgers are still looking to get more out of their newest high-price star. Kyle Tucker has not gotten going, going 2-for-13 over the Dodgers’ three-game set against the Rangers and striking out twice in a 1-for-5 day on Sunday. His OPS is .659 through 15 games. It’s a sample that makes up just 9.3 percent of a season. But the Dodgers have noticed Tucker likely trying to live up to his four-year, $240 million dollar megadeal. That has led to Tucker chasing out of the zone more, spiking his strikeout rate to 22.6 percent so far — way up from his 14.7 percent rate in 2025 with the Chicago Cubs. “There’s been a lot more chase down below, is what I see,” Roberts said of Tucker, who left the clubhouse Sunday before the media were allowed to enter. “I see him as a high-ball hitter, and so I guess a little bit just kind of getting him back into his hitting zone…That’s kind of what I see. And typically when guys chase, they’re trying to do a little bit too much.” Emmet Sheehan knew he needed to tap back into his old velocity. It just took tapping his glove to get it back. No one was more keenly aware of Sheehan’s concerning radar gun readings than the right-hander himself. Every conversation about the promising pitcher centered around his health (he insisted throughout he was fine), his extreme fluctuations inning to inning with his velocity (he didn’t know what caused them) and what was wrong with his mechanics (something, he figured, but nothing stuck). “The past like month and a half we’ve been trying to work on it,” Sheehan said. “It felt like, at times, it wasn’t progressing the way it should, but just stuck with it.” The Dodgers flipped around their rotation this weekend, swapping Tyler Glasnow to Friday and Sheehan to Saturday — a change that Roberts said was more about Glasnow not wanting to spend too many days between starts. But it did not hurt to give Sheehan seven days between starts to try to figure things out. Sheehan spent the ensuing week working with pitching coaches Mark Prior and Connor McGuiness to sort out what was wrong with his delivery. Dodgers officials have hypothesized for weeks that Sheehan was struggling to sequence his body properly. Sheehan’s delivery relies on rotating his body, but too often this spring, his upper half was flying open, bringing his momentum towards first base rather than direct towards home plate. He still flashed his top-end velocity occasionally, but was inconsistent with it. This time, Sheehan threw two bullpens instead of one with the extra days between starts. That gave him a chance to simulate his game intensity and take a deeper look. Sheehan has always patted his glove early on in his delivery. So they used it as a cue to get his body in a better rhythm. It appeared to click. Instead of flying open and sacrificing velocity and command, he was able to drive his delivery through to the plate. “One of the big things this week was the glove tap,” Sheehan said. “Just timing everything up. Before, I feel like I was getting in good positions. I just wasn’t timing everything up the right way. I think that helped a lot.” Sheehan averaged 95.2 mph on his fastball over six innings against the Rangers, up from the 93.8 mph he averaged in his first two starts. The velocity still tailed off with each inning, perhaps a byproduct of him not pitching into the sixth inning in quite a while. It marked progress. The Dodgers have been enamored with Sheehan for quite some time. But seeing how he worked through his struggles showed Roberts something. “The delivery work, the outward looking at competing, all that stuff, that’s what you’re looking for from a young pitcher,” Roberts said. “So he’s still young, as far as service time and innings in the big leagues, but he’s really talented.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Fabian Ardaya is a staff writer covering the Los Angeles Dodgers for The Athletic. He previously spent three seasons covering the crosstown Los Angeles Angels for The Athletic. He graduated from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in May 2017 after growing up in a Phoenix-area suburb. Follow Fabian on Twitter @FabianArdaya