WILL THE DODGERS EVER LOSE ANOTHER GAME? THEY’VE JUST ADDED ROKI SASAKI
The owner lost his compound in Malibu, but Mark Walter is putting together a massive all-time franchise, adding the 23-year-old prize to a blowout pitching staff including Ohtani, Yamamoto and Snell
In what is left of Malibu, Mark Walter’s $85 million compound was demolished. He is the controlling owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and as he contends with windblown ash atop his ocean view, he at least knows his pitching staff might be the greatest in baseball history. Roki Sasaki is the latest godsend.
He throws a splitter that cannot be touched. He hurls fastballs at 102 miles per hour. He pitched four years for the Chiba Lotte Marines and struck out 524 batters in 414 2/3 innings with a 2.02 ERA. He mastered a perfect game with 13 straight strikeouts. When teamed with Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow, would someone explain how any other club will win a game?
A sport once known as the national pastime has allowed 29 teams to be relegated. Even the Yankees and Mets, who signed Juan Soto for $765 million, will watch with jaws slackened in New York. When the deal was announced Friday, I stopped in the Dodgers Clubhouse shop in Santa Monica. No Sasaki jersey was for sale yet, but a peek reminded me that this is a massive team of Hall of Fame megastars including Ohtani the all-timer, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman to accompany grand pitchers who also include some version of Clayton Kershaw. The Dodgers can give away Bobbleheads every game.
They also will prompt many owners to ask why they even bother to field a team. The collective bargaining agreement expires on Dec. 1 of next year. It might be the end of the sport until a salary cap is established, which won’t happen as long as the Major League Baseball Players Association runs the labor show. Until then, expect two more parades around Dodger Stadium.
Consider it good fortune that the newcomer is two years younger than 25 and played less than six years in Nippon Professional Baseball. It means Walter only will pay Sasaki an international signing bonus — say, $6.5 million — and still can deal with his mansion’s insurance representative. It was an odd time to announce another flagship acquisition, which blew off San Diego and Toronto and several other losers, but Sasaki made his decision known on Instagram without waiting a week.
“It was a very difficult decision,” he called it, “but I will do my best (that) this was a correct decision, once I look back on my life as a baseball player. At my news conference for joining the club, I hope to wear my Dodgers uniform, feeling gratitude for all those who have supported me.”
Said his agent, Joel Wolfe, referring to reports he was headed to the Dodgers all along: “There was a lot of discussion in the media, in the league, in NPB about Roki’s situation. There were some accusations, allegations, all of them false, made about predetermined deals, things like that. However, MLB rightly wanted to make sure that this was going to be a fair and level playing field for everyone, so they did their due diligence and interviewed numerous parties ahead of time to make sure that that was the case.”
Not that Sasaki doesn’t understand the worst of tragedies. In March 2011, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake blew away his hometown of Rikuzentakata in Japan’s northeast coast. More than 18,000 people died, including his father and paternal grandparents in a tsunami. He had to survive as a young man and learn how to pitch. By last season, he was walking around the Chiba Lotte clubhouse bragging about the major leagues. “I go in there, and he’s joking around: ‘I’m going to this team, I’m going to that team!’ He’s so ready to go,” former Pittsburgh outfielder Gregory Polanco told the Washington Post.
The minute Ohtani and Yamamoto signed with the Dodgers, Sasaki was on board. He is prepared at 6 foot 3 and committed with a dominant arsenal. Let Shota Imanaga pitch for the Cubs and Yu Darvish for the Padres. He wants to win rings, season after season. “I don’t think you’re going to have a problem over there, man,” said teammate Brandon Laird, another former big-leaguer.
By arriving in the U.S. at 23, Sasaki is leaving too early according to observers in his native land. “There’s been a lot of negativity in the media directed at him because he has expressed interest at going to play for MLB at such a young age,” Wolfe said. “That is considered in Japan to be very disrespectful and sort of swimming upstream.” He can’t make monster money until he pitches six major-league seasons. The Dodgers finally didn’t have to spend.
Oh, but they will.
They’ll open the season, of course, in Tokyo on March 18 and 19. For those wishing to visit Los Angeles, as it recovers, the stadium is dazzled in Japanese advertising and restaurants. One souvenir stand has only Ohtani and Yamamoto.
Add Sasaki.
And pray for the other team.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.