Roki Sasaki started the year with a right shoulder impingement that interrupted his early rhythm—but by May, the Dodgers say his communication has grown, his pitch work has evolved, and his confidence has noticeably sharpened as he heads toward his 30th major-
On Friday, Roki Sasaki will take the mound against the Angels for what will be only his 30th major-league appearance—regular season and postseason combined. It’s a small number on paper, the kind that reminds you how much is still brand-new for a 24-year-old navigating life far from home.
During the past year and a half with the Dodgers. Sasaki has also started letting people see a side that’s been easy to miss: he jokes. He talks trash. The jokes come from a player whose demeanor used to look reserved on the field and in postgame interviews. but whose inner game is changing as his MLB routine becomes more familiar.
“He talks a lot of trash,” Dodgers strength and conditioning coach Travis Smith told The Times this week, with a smile. “He’s not quiet at all.”
The Dodgers have been watching that shift carefully. They expected growing pains when they dug in on the decision to let him work through the rotation as he began his sophomore season. What they’ve gotten, especially through May, has looked steadier. Sasaki’s ERA through the month of May sits at 3.18. with “still more room to grow” and stronger communication between Sasaki and the club.
Manager Dave Roberts said there’s still a lot of expectation attached to bringing a star from Japan, but not enough mileage yet to match it.
“Obviously, there’s a lot of talent there,” Roberts said. “There was a lot of expectation in getting him over here. But he still hasn’t pitched a whole lot of professional innings, and he’s still young.”
Roberts added that the club’s own expectations can outrun what Sasaki can reasonably be asked to absorb early on.
“And so I do think that … we’re probably kind of over-expecting from Roki at an early stage. But for him, I wouldn’t say he would agree with our take and that’s a good thing from the athlete.”
The change is visible in how Sasaki describes the move from NPB to MLB—less like a clean step forward, more like a series of jarring adjustments, from travel and competition to the schedule and, most sharply, the way teams talk to players.
In a recent conversation with The Times through interpreter Kensuke Okubo, Sasaki pointed to two differences that have stuck with him.
First is the speed of communication around injuries. Sasaki said that in Japan, when he flagged discomfort in his shoulder, the response from the coaching staff was essentially that everyone deals with aches and pains—so there was no pressure for him to treat discomfort as urgent information.
“But here, if something happens to your body, you have to tell them right away,” Sasaki said. “You don’t want to hide it.”
Second is the role confidence plays in interviews and on-field performance. Sasaki described how Americans, especially through postgame interviews, put emphasis on breaking down what went right in a bad outing and explaining how things turned.
“In Japan, after a rough start, he didn’t feel the need to talk about silver linings,” the piece notes.
But for Sasaki, the bigger point was what he didn’t realize he was being asked to do.
“Nobody tells you about the culture,” Sasaki said. “So I couldn’t really tell what you guys wanted in an interview, or when I talked to you guys. So, if I knew that kind of stuff earlier, then I could have reacted in a different way, so that I could make you guys understand a little more.”
Now, he leans on guidance from the people closest to his daily work. He’s leaned on Smith and Will Ireton, the Dodgers’ director of Japanese player operations and strategy and Ohtani’s interpreter.
When asked for the best advice he’s received, Sasaki described a mindset shift he’s had to learn both ways.
“In Japan, being humble is … really important,” Sasaki said. “So whatever happens, and whatever I do, I’ve got to be humble. But here, once you make it, you have to be like, ‘I’m the one.’ It’s not showing off, but you don’t have to be really humble. You’ve got to show what you’ve got.”
If there’s a line between what he needed to survive last year and what he’s doing now, it’s right there: show who you are.
The Dodgers say they’re seeing it.
“Guys love him,” Roberts said. “Guys really like Roki.”
That comfort isn’t just abstract team chemistry. Sasaki has grown close with the Dodgers bullpen catchers. Hamlet Marte and Francisco Herrera. and he’s used the language he picked up in Japan to build bridges—Spanish learned from Latino teammates in Japan that he can use to help bridge the language barrier.
“We’ve been trying to make him feel comfortable,” Herrera said. “So it’s a good thing that he’s opening up a lot.”
Marte, who catches Sasaki most often, can be spotted shouting to him in Japanese across the clubhouse or running through dynamic stretches with him before side sessions. Herrera said anime has been a shared point of connection between them.
People around Sasaki are protective, too. Sasaki endured the death of his father in a tsunami at a young age and has already weathered extensive outside criticism in his professional baseball career, before arriving in MLB. Smith said he started offering reassurance immediately.
“I told him at the very beginning,” Smith said, “you’ve just got to stick with us, be confident, and know who you are. And when you’re raising that trophy at the end of the year, I remember I told you this.”
For all the emphasis on the new relationships and communication, there’s still a hard timeline behind what the Dodgers had to work around.
Before the Dodgers signed him in January 2025. two-thirds of the teams in MLB sent in initial pitches. according to his agent Joel Wolfe. The club’s signing came after Sasaki left Japan and posted as an international amateur free agent last year. doing what Shohei Ohtani did in 2017—signing before regular free agency rather than waiting for it.
That decision came with massive expectations attached, but Sasaki’s early MLB stretch was interrupted by what the Dodgers called a right shoulder impingement.
Just eight starts into the season, he was sidelined and pulled out of the usual cycle of in-game feedback followed by meetings and side work with the coaching staff.
“I don’t want to overplay it. but I don’t want to undersell it [either]. ” pitching coach Mark Prior said. “When you’re pitching and you’re in it. there’s back and forth. there’s more dialogue that happens about. ‘What is the game ultimately telling you?’ … Ultimately. for us to get everybody collectively in the right spot. it takes time of learning each other in those moments.”.
He finally got again in late September and into the offseason, but in a different role. Sasaki thrived coming out of the bullpen in the eighth and ninth innings, allowing just one earned run in nine postseason appearances.
“That helped me build a good relationship with the coaches,” Sasaki said.
Once he returned to the rotation, the conversations changed. Sasaki described a shift away from simply getting through the season and back toward tactical detail.
“This year, especially, I feel like we’re focusing on talking about game plan and sequencing, because I feel healthy right now,” Sasaki said. “Last year I got hurt, so I’m thinking about my mechanics, all that stuff. So this is a big difference right now.”
Roberts said he noticed that change long before Sasaki’s strong May performance.
“The trust on both sides has continued to get stronger,” Roberts said in early April. “And that’s understandable. That takes time. He and the pitching coaches are having much more dialogue. He’s expressing his thoughts, which has been great. And I think we’re seeing the benefits.”
Since then, the Dodgers point to tangible developments in Sasaki’s work: a new, harder splitter and, more recently, an uptick in fastball velocity.
For all the improvement in May, the story isn’t finished. Sasaki’s Friday start against the Angels is still just another step in a season shaped by injury, adaptation, and the slow return of trust—until the player who once looked quiet on the mound is finally letting the game hear him.
Roki Sasaki Dodgers Angels MLB translator Kensuke Okubo Travis Smith Dave Roberts right shoulder impingement splitter fastball velocity