LOS ANGELES -- Navigating the highs and lows of a long season is the game within the game of baseball. For Roki Sasaki, every start tends to come with those extremes.
That was apparent in the Dodgers' 5-2 loss to the Rangers on Sunday afternoon. Sasaki set one favorable MLB career high (six strikeouts) while matching a less favorable one (five walks) in four innings of two-run ball.
That is the duality of man, the extremity of outcome, that is so common when Sasaki takes the mound.
"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. "So basically what I'm working on is attack the zone, throw strikes and keep moving forward."
Despite having to pitch around a career-high 10 baserunners, Sasaki successfully limited the damage to just a pair of runs, both of which scored in the third inning. That frame, Evan Carter took him deep for a leadoff homer and Josh Smith tacked on another run on a two-out RBI single.
Sasaki can look like a different pitcher from one inning to the next, and even from one batter to the next. In the top of the first, he allowed his first two hitters to reach on a base hit and a walk before sending his next three down swinging. In the second, he had two runners in scoring position with one out, but managed to get away cleanly. In the third, he recorded two quick outs after Carter's homer, then allowed four straight batters to reach, with a wild pitch mixed in. The fourth was his least eventful inning, as he only issued a one-out walk.
"What it does say is when it gets really hot, gets stressful, then he finds a way to make pitches," manager Dave Roberts said. "So how do you get ahead of that and not let an inning get built? That’s what the great ones do."
It ended up being somewhat of a wild yet effective outing for Sasaki, with a few things to like. He generated plenty of swing-and-miss with a career-high 15 whiffs, one more in than last Sunday's start against the Nationals. He's also been able to maintain a fastball velocity in the upper 90s, although he has been shy of the triple-digit heat that used to be his calling card in Nippon Professional Baseball.
"I don't think it was a bad outing at all," catcher Dalton Rushing said. "It's kind of the same thing. We just have to lean on really attacking hitters a little more and getting ahead. I think that changes the counts facing hitters and also gets a little more chase. You see what he did, obviously, with runners on and getting ahead with the splitter, getting ahead with the cutter, getting a little more miss on his fastball, getting miss on the splitter."
But the start wasn't very efficient. Sasaki needed 94 pitches (53 strikes) to complete four innings, leaving the final five frames in the hands of the bullpen.
In many ways, Sunday's start was emblematic of how Sasaki needs to grow in his second season in the Majors. It all boils down to consistency, from the first out he records to the final one and from one start to the next.
Last year, when Sasaki made eight starts before going on the injured list with a right shoulder impingement, he recorded an out after the fourth inning only four times, taxing a bullpen that had the heaviest workload by innings in the Majors. He's pitched more than four innings once in his three starts this year.
Sasaki realizes that the Dodgers need length from him, perhaps even more than they need good results. The team sees that as the next step toward Sasaki becoming the big league starter he wants to be. And to get there, he can take quite a few lessons away from his latest start.
"That’s something that I talked to him about," Roberts said. "Challenging him to, 'When you take the baseball, we’re trying to go five innings or more.' So I think that’s the next progression for him, to be consistently able to do that. But I do feel the growth part of it is to hang in there and make pitches when he needs to. That’s important."