Roki Sasaki’s abysmal performance faded away in the Dodgers’ 12-7 win over the San Diego Padres on Thursday night at Dodger Stadium, but only after the National League West leaders rose from a catatonic first inning.
Andy Pages skirted a tying double down the left-field line, and Mookie Betts and Max Muncy each drove in runs that broke the game open in the fourth inning. All of which sent the sellout crowd into jubilant celebrations, some jumping, others breaking out World Cup chants.
So, by the time the game ended, Sasaki’s three-inning start seemed like a murky nightmare the Dodgers awoke from in a sweat. Except the Dodgers weren’t dreaming, and the team hadn’t done much to assuage the concerns with Sasaki.
The problem with Sasaki isn’t his stuff. It never has been. On his best nights, when the velocity and command combine for a lethal dosage, Sasaki blows past batters with a triple-digit fastball and cutting offspeed pitches. The problem has been how to tick the radar without making the strike zone look like a Jason Pollock painting — and recently, it has.
Sasaki’s June swoon, impervious to the calendar change, continued into Thursday’s series opener against the Padres, where the starter gave up three home runs and seven hits before manager Dave Roberts called it quits going into the fourth inning.
As San Diego chugged through its lineup, Sasaki struggled to keep up. With his first pitch, the righty gave up a double to Fernando Tatis Jr., who later scored on Manny Machado’s home run that left center fielder Andy Pages staring at the ball’s path as it plopped down on the other side of the blue outfield fence.
The inning was only a preview of the Padres’ power. Each of the nine San Diego batters got his chance against the Sasaki in the second, and the team quickly dug the Dodgers into a six-run hole. He surrendered two home runs in the second inning to San Diego. First, Jackson Merrill blasted a ball to left-center field, and, two outs later, Jake Cronenworth drove in two runs with a shot to right-center.
Part of Sasaki’s issue lies with his approach. Roberts said he wants Sasaki to be aggressive, to play the cat-and-mouse game required to beat batters in the box. But when given the opportunity, Sasaki has shrunken in recent outings, and Los Angeles paid the price while emotions ran high.
So when reliever Will Klein walked out to the mound in the fourth to the aggressive, rambunctious clamour of the Dropkick Murphys’ “Shipping Up to Boston,” and collected two scoreless, one-hit innings, the relief was immediate: the team took the lead.
Dalton Rushing homered in the second inning while Sasaki was still in the game, and both Kyle Tucker and Max Muncy tacked on additional runs in the third, cutting the deficit to two. Pages’ double tied the score, breaking open the game for the Dodgers to then score six additional runs in the fourth and fifth innings.
A late-game assist by Pages helped close out the game after he caught a ball despite ramming into the padding of the center field wall. A combined ninth-inning effort by Paul Gervase and Tanner Scott shut down the ninth-inning momentum, despite San Diego pushing across a run.
The Dodgers can list the reasons why the team is better than their southern foes. Namely, the Padres have given up 65 runs over the last six days, the worst the franchise has performed in that amount of time…ever.
But San Diego’s flaws don’t negate the Dodgers’ as they burned through six relievers in their winning bid. So, while the Dodgers crawled out of the hole with a season-high 17 hits, the steep cost heightens the pressure on the rest of the rotation the rest of the series.