There’s desperate, and there’s desperate to where you’re looking for Roki Sasaki to be the answer to your team’s late-inning problems.
The same Roki Sasaki who hasn’t pitched in a major league game in more than four months because of shoulder problems.
The same Roki Sasaki who posted a 4.72 earned-run average in eight starts.
The same Roki Sasaki who last week in the minors pitched as a reliever for the first time.
The Dodgers’ exploration of Sasaki as a late-inning option is a reflection of the 23-year-old rookie’s upside, but this isn’t a commentary of Sasaki as much as it is of the roster.
The team’s bullpen problems have persisted into the final week of the regular season, and the potential solutions sound like miracles, starting with Sasaki’s audition for a postseason role as a reliever.
Sasaki pitched twice in relief for triple-A Oklahoma City, touching 100 mph in a scoreless inning on Thursday and retiring the side on Sunday.
Manager Dave Roberts said Sasaki would rejoin the Dodgers for their upcoming road series against the Arizona Diamondbacks. The earliest Sasaki would be available to pitch would be on Wednesday.
With only six games remaining in the regular season, Sasaki figures to pitch no more than twice for the Dodgers before the playoffs. That being the case, do the Dodgers plan to use him in high-leverage situations to learn how he performs in late-inning situations?
“We’re still trying to win games, and this would be his third outing in the ‘pen, first in the big leagues, so not sure,” Roberts said.
Then again, what’s the alternative? Continue to run out Blake Treinen?
The most dependable reliever on the Dodgers’ World Series run last season, the 37-year-old Treinen was re-signed to a two-year, $22-million contract over the winter. He missed more than three months of this season with a forearm strain and hasn’t rediscovered the form that made him a postseason hero. Treinen is 1-7 with a 5.55 earned-run average for the season and has taken a loss in five of his last seven games.
Treinen cost the Dodgers another game on Sunday when he inherited a 1-0 lead, only to give up three runs in the eighth inning of an eventual 3-1 defeat.
Roberts was booed when he emerged from the dugout to remove Treinen, but whom did the fans want the manager to call on to pitch that inning instead?
Tanner Scott?
Kirby Yates?
Alex Vesia is the most trustworthy bullpen arm, but if he pitched the eighth inning, who would have pitched the ninth?
Roberts acknowledged he was basically reduced to holding out hope that when the postseason starts Treinen would magically revert to being the pitcher he was last year.
Wouldn’t it be unsettling to have to count on Treinen without seeing him pitch better in the regular season?
“Certainly, I’d like to see some more consistent performance,” Roberts said. “But at the end of the day, there’s going to be certain guys that I feel that we’re going to go to in leverage [situations] and certain guys we’re not going to.”
Evidently, Treinen is still viewed as a leverage-situation pitcher.
Roberts said: “My trust in him is unwavering.”
There aren’t many other choices.
Maybe Will Klein, who was called up from the minors for the third time last week. Klein struck out the side on Saturday and gave up a leadoff double in a scoreless inning on Sunday.
Maybe Brock Stewart, who has been sidelined with shoulder problems for the majority of the time since he was acquired at the trade deadline. Stewart will rejoin the Dodgers in Arizona.
Or maybe Emmet Sheehan or Clayton Kershaw, who are expected to be pushed out of the postseason rotation by Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Shohei Ohtani and Tyler Glasnow. Sheehan started on Sunday and pitched seven scoreless innings.
The playoff picture is unlikely to change for the Dodgers between now and the end of the regular season, as they are four games behind the Philadelphia Phillies for the No. 2 seed in the National League and three games ahead of the second-place San Diego Padres in the NL West. Nonetheless, Roberts said he was unsure of how high-leverage innings over the next week would be allocated, which spoke to the degree of uncertainty about the bullpen. Should these innings be used to straighten out previously-successful relievers such as Treinen and Scott? Or to experiment with unknown commodities such as Sasaki and Klein?
Just a couple of weeks ago, the door for Sasaki pitching in the playoffs was locked and bolted. The Dodgers have been rocked by the dreadful performance of their bullpen, so much so that a door that was once slammed shut is now wide open.
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