Column: By joining Dodgers, Roki Sasaki prioritizes development over being a team’s top star

He has better control than Shohei Ohtani had at the same stage of his career.

He is more athletic than Hideo Nomo was.

He throws harder than Yu Darvish.

Roki Sasaki is the most talented pitcher Japan has produced, and the 23-year-old with a 6-foot-4 frame and 102.5-mph fastball is now a Dodger.

If Sasaki was born and raised in the United States, his physical gifts and natural feel for pitching would have made him a candidate to be chosen first overall in the draft when coming out of high school. He shouldn’t be compared to someone such as Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who overcame his diminutive stature.

Being the most talented pitcher from his country doesn’t mean Sasaki is the best, only that he has a chance to be the best. Sasaki is aware of that, and he presumably chose to sign with the Dodgers because he figured they could help him realize his declared ambition of becoming the best player in the world.

Dodgers

Dodgers to sign Japanese star Roki Sasaki in yet another free-agency victory for L.A.

The Dodgers pull off another big win in free agency, agreeing to sign Japanese sensation Roki Sasaki to bolster their already formidable starting pitching staff.

“Roki is by no means a finished product,” his agent, Joel Wolfe, said last month. “He knows it and the team knows it.”

Whether Sasaki was right to place his career in the hands of the Dodgers can be debated. They produce more high-quality arms than any other team in baseball, but in recent years an abnormally high percentage of their homegrown pitchers sustained major injuries.

Whatever uncertainties exist about how the Dodgers develop their pitchers, the organization can promise him this much: Sasaki will be part of a six-man rotation.

Other teams Sasaki considered, such as the San Diego Padres or Toronto Blue Jays, could have presented him with a similar plan. However, only the Dodgers really can guarantee they actually will follow through with it. Ohtani’s return to the mound next season will require a six-man rotation.

Roki Sasaki pitches for Japan in the 2023 World Baseball Classic.

(Eugene Hoshiko / Associated Press)

Even with Ohtani not pitching last season as he recovered from reconstructive elbow surgery, the Dodgers refrained from using Yamamoto on a traditional five-day pitching cycle. Pitchers in the Japanese league generally pitch once a week, and the Dodgers didn’t want to suddenly increase his workload.

This is particularly important for Sasaki, who was handled by the Chiba Lotte Marines with greater care than how Japanese teams usually handle their pitchers. The Marines broke from tradition by treating Sasaki the way major league teams do, as they carefully monitored his innings.

Sasaki didn’t throw a single competitive pitch for the Marines as an 18-year-old rookie, and injuries kept him from making more than 20 starts in a season. In the four seasons in which he pitched for the Marines, he threw a total of 394⅔ innings. In 2022, when Sasaki was three outs away from throwing a second perfect game in as many starts, he was removed after the eighth inning.

Ohtani pitched 543 innings in Nippon Professional Baseball, and he was a two-way player. Yamamoto pitched 897 innings. Nomo and Darvish pitched more than 1,000 innings before they stepped on a major league field.

Sasaki will be moving to the majors as a relatively inexperienced pitcher.

Dodgers

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“He has taken a long-term, global view of things,” Wolfe said. “I believe Roki is also very interested in pitching development and how a team is going to help him get better, both in the near future and over the course of his career.”

A key part of that will be to remain healthy. The Dodgers’ track record with young arms is disconcerting, but no other team has the necessary depth to effectively deploy a six-man rotation without compromising its chances of winning. No other team has a starting pitcher who basically doesn’t take up a roster spot, as Ohtani is a designated hitter on most nights.

By picking the Dodgers over the Padres, Sasaki has deprived baseball of regular showdowns with Ohtani, who like Sasaki is from Japan’s Iwate prefecture. With the Dodgers, he always will be an extension of Ohtani’s legacy. The best-case scenario for him is that he plays the role of Scottie Pippen to Ohtani’s Michael Jordan.

Sasaki is counting on the Dodgers providing him with something else, the opportunity to maximize his limitless potential.