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Alden Gonzalez, ESPN editor
The monster of the Reiwa era has arrived.
Japanese right-hander Roki Sasaki picked the Los Angeles Dodgers as his major league team on Friday night and will soon grace American baseball fans with his devastating arsenal and captivating potential.
Sasaki is only 23 years old and national evaluators have been salivating over his potential since he was a teenager. Armed with a triple-digit fastball, a jaw-dropping splitter and the determination of a budding ace, Sasaki’s release last month shook the industry and had virtually every team dreaming of adding him to their rotation.
In four years with the Chiba Lotte Marines of Japan, Sasaki posted a 2.02 ERA, 0.88 WHIP, 524 strikeouts and 91 walks in 414⅔ innings. In one two-game stretch in April 2022, he had a perfect game — highlighted by an NPB-record 13 straight outs — and followed it with eight perfect innings. He will now try to keep up with Yu Darvish, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Kodai Senga and Shota Imanaga, Japanese aces who have all made the transition to Major League Baseball rather smoothly.
One day, Sasaki might be better than all of them.
But he’s not there yet.
ESPN spoke with numerous scouts and evaluators who spent years following Sasaki in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball League, and the picture they painted was one of a gifted and determined pitcher who showed promise, but who , despite the hype that has surrounded him since high school. , is not yet fully formed.
So what can the Dodgers expect from him in 2025? What follows are the top five takeaways from Sasaki’s scouts and evaluators, for this upcoming season and beyond.