In true Hollywood fashion, Rōki Sasaki debuted for the Dodgers in a cinematic three-act structure.
As the curtain opened, the 23-year-old fireballer showed what had made him one of baseball's most sought-after ever pitching prospects. Center stage in front of a soldout Tokyo Dome crowd where getting into the Super Bowl would have been easier, his first three pitches were lighting strikes across the bow. All three pitches recorded over 100 mph. Ian Happ battled and made contact on Sasaki's tertiary throw but could only despondently watch as he flew out to the left.
Next up, fellow countryman and established Major League star Seiya Suzuki offered up his bat to fight. Sasaki whipped his arm back along his lanky, still-developing frame and accepted the challenge. He eventually froze Suzuki with a fastball to record his first big league strikeout. After another flyout from new Cubs linchpin Kyle Tucker, the crowd rose to its feet in admiration of their reborn son—a new leading man ready to take over the industry as we know it.
If only things were that easy. When the second inning came around, so did the growing pains of being a pitcher with so much promise and maybe even greater expectations attached. The location of his fastball stopped painting the canvas and started coloring outside the lines. And even more importantly, his splitter, Sasaki's ace up his sleeve, which separates him from the elite prospects to an echelon only a few can dare touch, was struggling to take shape.
At his peak performance, Sasaki's splitter is the equivalent of a heavyweight champion's knockout punch. The movement resembles his fastball, which can burn a catcher's mitt. However, the ball disappears as the hitter's eye is ready to take the gamble of a swing. As if it was a meteor dropping down to earth, so does Sasaki's splitter, chopping down even the sturdiest of batters to their knees. One second, it's brute force; the next, it makes you a fool, a yo-yo on a string.
On Wednesday, though, he was not at his peak. Instead, he looked like the kid he still is, struggling to get through an uncomfortable second inning before being saved by veteran and team leader Miguel Rojas with a savvy double play. He was wobbly but left undamaged, marching onto the third.
The Dodgers continued to help the debutant with run support, capped off at the top of the third with a Tommy Edman home run to give them a 3-0 lead. After a shaky second inning, Sasaki wanted to put the two walks he surrendered and take back control of the game.
It didn't happen. Sasaki's splitter, which wowed scouts and scared opponents alike, was less meteor-dropping and more like a misguided dart after a few drinks. The Cubs batters could see which pitch was coming from a mile (or two) away and diligently waited, politely asking for the perceived phenom to present himself as he had in the first frame. Sasaki couldn't hit the strike zone, creating a parade around the bases, ultimately leading to his first run earned against him in the majors.
With the bases loaded and the crowd on edge, it was difficult not to think about Yoshinobu Yamamoto's Dodger debut last year. Although Yamamoto would go on to become one of the team's integral pieces in winning the World Series, the opening start couldn't have gone worse for the three-time Japanese MVP. In South Korea against the rival San Diego Padres, Yamamoto was steamrolled. Every ball seemed to be a magnet toward the sweet spot of a Padres bat as they knocked him around the proverbial ring until, mercifully, Dave Roberts kept him in the dugout following the first inning.
Yamamoto grew from that moment and ended the year by throwing a one-hit masterpiece against the Yankees in the World Series. Now, he was the ace in the Tokyo Series opener, this time putting on a dazzling performance in his chance at redemption on the Asian continent, getting the win over the Cubs.
If Sasaki had crumbled at that moment in the third inning, bases load and only one out, it would have been fine. It would have been an appropriate growth moment for a pitcher whose goal is to become one of the greatest pitchers the world has ever seen. A player who has been bugging his former Major League teammates in Japan for years to hear their stories, longing for the chance to write his own tale.
But even when his stuff wasn't the best, and his command was wilder than Charlie Sheen donning a Cleveland jersey, he fought. He saw the game slipping away and turned inward, feeling like he was throwing off more raw instinct than calculated precision. You could hear his grunts as he clashed with his current form to guide his pitches where he needed them to land.
Former Dodger Michael Busch watched on a 2-2 count as a ball zipped by him and nailed the edge of the strike zone, a pitch Sasaki had been missing for most of the night.
Chicago's prized rookie, Matt Shaw, was next to the plate. Sasaki pounced as if the previous half-hour of mishaps and misthrows never occurred. It was three straight whiffs of the bat, culminating in Shaw lunging for a ball in the dirt, a slider resembling that meteoric splitter.
"I was nervous," Sasaki admitted in a post-game interview on the field through team interpreter Will Ireton. "But in a way, it really helped me concentrate. [It] helped me live in the moment."
Sasaki asked Roberts for a chance to continue into the fourth but rebuffed. The team is always at the forefront on a roster such as the Dodgers, where depth sets them apart from the other contenders. That night, they needed Sasaki to be who he was—inexperienced, determined, and talented beyond belief. Roberts hopes he'll be ready through his trials and tribulations throughout the year and, in the postseason, when Sasaki asks again to push through into deep waters, no batter can stand in his way.
In the grand scheme of things, Sasaki was merely a strong supporting actor in the film known as the Tokyo Series. His two Japanese teammates, Shohei Ohtani and Yamamoto, who were pivotal in his signing with Los Angeles, stole the show on the mound and at the plate. He ended the game sitting at the end of the dugout atop the stairs, watching Rojas make another brilliant defensive play to end any last-minute heroics from the Cubs.
Rōki Sasaki has what it takes to become the best pitcher in the world, but he's still a work in progress in many ways.
But the adventure he so desperately wanted, where he sacrificed millions of dollars by leaving Nippon Professional Baseball early to fly across the ocean to Los Angeles, has officially begun.
And what a grand adventure it will be.