NEW YORK — Sometimes a baseball season changes on a random Friday night in July.
Not with a walk-off home run but with a 101.8 mph fastball that announces to everyone watching that a pitcher has finally arrived.
Maybe we'll look back at Friday night at Yankee Stadium and realize this was that game for Roki Sasaki.
The Dodgers certainly hope so.
For months, Sasaki has been searching. There have been flashes of brilliance, moments where you could see why he was considered one of the most gifted pitchers in the world before he ever threw a major league pitch. But there were also injuries, inconsistent command, diminished velocity and the understandable growing pains of a 24-year-old trying to adjust to baseball's biggest stage.
Against the Yankees, none of that mattered.
This looked like the Roki Sasaki the Dodgers envisioned when they won the race to sign him.
He attacked hitters instead of nibbling. He trusted his fastball. He trusted his splitter. Most importantly, he trusted himself.
The result was arguably his most significant start in a Dodgers uniform.
Sasaki struck out five, walked one and allowed just one unearned run over 5 2/3 innings as the Dodgers beat the Yankees, 2-1, to open a marquee three-game series in the Bronx. The lone run wasn't even his fault, coming after an Andy Pages fielding error allowed Jasson Domínguez to reach third before Dalton Rushing was charged with a passed ball.
Outside of that defensive hiccup, Sasaki was in complete control.
The radar gun was impossible to ignore.
He reached a career-high 101.8 mph in the opening inning. He threw 21 fastballs at 100 mph or harder — the most by any Dodger since pitch tracking began in 2008. His average fastball velocity was 100.1 mph, also a career best as a starter.
The numbers were eye-popping. The confidence may have been even more impressive.
"I think I got some break also, and I made some adjustments on my delivery and it really helped me out," Sasaki said through interpreter Kensuke Okubo, explaining the work he put in during the All-Star break. He said he reworked how he was using his lower body and immediately felt the difference.
Perhaps the most telling comment came when Sasaki admitted he didn't even realize how hard he was throwing.
"The velocity was actually there," he said. "I think that's a good thing."
That's the scary part. He wasn't overthrowing. He wasn't chasing radar-gun readings.
The velocity simply came naturally because everything else was finally working.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has seen this movie before.
Two years ago, another Japanese ace walked into Yankee Stadium still trying to establish himself. Yoshinobu Yamamoto delivered one of the best starts of his rookie season, and Roberts has often pointed to that night as the beginning of Yamamoto's transformation into the frontline starter he has become.
After watching Sasaki overpower the Yankees on Friday, Roberts couldn't help but make the comparison.
"It sort of reminded me of when Yamamoto was here a couple years ago," Roberts said. "That performance was a turning point for him."
Could this become Sasaki's turning point?
"I hope so," Roberts said. "He wanted to get off on the right foot in the second half and he did just that."
The comparison isn't just about pitching well at Yankee Stadium.
It's about confidence.
Roberts noted the difference between pitching at 97 or 98 mph and sitting at 101.
"That's a big difference," Roberts said. "It gives you a lot more margin." He also praised Sasaki's splitter, saying its command generated swings and misses throughout the night after the work Sasaki put in during the break.
Confidence was the word that kept resurfacing after the game.
No one may have captured it better than Dodgers catcher Dalton Rushing, who has watched Sasaki evolve from behind the plate.
"He was a different animal out there tonight," Rushing said.
That wasn't about velocity. That was about presence.
Rushing noticed Sasaki showing emotion after strikeouts, pumping his fist and feeding off the moment; something that hadn't been part of his personality during much of the season.
"You could see it," Rushing said. "He's getting fired up in the second, third inning, and that's not something we've seen much out of Roki up to this point. But we know he needs that to succeed at this level."
Then Rushing offered perhaps the simplest explanation of all.
"Everything in this game comes with confidence."
There have been plenty of nights this season where Sasaki looked like a pitcher trying not to make mistakes.
Friday, he looked like a pitcher daring the Yankees to hit him.
Yankee Stadium has long been a place where stars announce themselves. Whether it's October legends or unforgettable regular-season performances, the ballpark has a way of revealing who belongs under baseball's brightest lights.
Sasaki didn't just survive them. He embraced them on Friday.
He admitted afterward that pitching in Yankee Stadium, against one of baseball's iconic franchises, was a special experience and that he wanted to make the most of the opportunity. More importantly, he believes the mechanical adjustments he made over the All-Star break are repeatable and can carry forward, even while acknowledging that baseball rarely guarantees anything.
That's true but sometimes one game changes everything because it gives a player something to believe in.
The Dodgers saw it happen with Yamamoto.
Now they're hoping they witnessed the beginning of the same story with Sasaki.
It's far too early to declare this a career-defining performance.
But if Sasaki becomes the ace everyone believes he can be, don't be surprised if the first chapter begins on a July night in the Bronx, when the radar gun flashed 101, Yankee Stadium buzzed with every fastball, and for the first time all season, the Dodgers' newest phenom looked completely at home.