For most of 2026, Roki Sasaki has been a walking question mark. A 5.33 ERA through his first 16 starts, whispers about a minor league demotion, a shoulder impingement that shelved him for nearly five months last year, all wrapped around a pitcher the Dodgers paid a fortune to import out of Japan. Then Friday night happened against the Yankees, and suddenly everybody's talking about him for a completely different reason.
The buildup before Sasaki even took the mound had the internet on alert.
Sasaki's fastball, which had been sitting around 97.6 mph on the season, was touching 100 and beyond over and over. Pitch-tracking accounts lit up in real time as he blew away hitters with back-to-back triple-digit heaters before dropping in a slider that looked nothing like the pitch he'd been throwing all year.
Back-to-back 102-mph fastballs setting up a slider that had nobody chance.
It wasn't just the fastball. Sasaki paired the velocity with a splitter that made hitters look silly, the same pitch that's supposed to be his signature weapon whenever his stuff is right. When the heat and the splitter show up together, this is the guy the Dodgers thought they were signing.
The splitter that had scouts and fans buzzing right alongside the fastball.
By the end of the night, the counting stat was absurd: 21 pitches at 100-plus mph in a single start, more than double anything he'd shown in any previous outing this season and the most by any Los Angeles Dodger in the entire pitch-tracking era, surpassing marks set by Bobby Miller and even Shohei Ohtani.
The all-time Dodgers leaderboard for single-game 100-mph pitches, topped by Sasaki's outing.
Most 100+ MPH Pitches By A Los Angeles Dodger In Any Single Game In The Entire Pitch Tracking Era: 21 Rōki Sasaki (🔥tonight🔥) 20 Bobby Miller 19 Bobby Miller 18 17 16 Shohei Ohtani 15 Edgardo Henriquez 14 Bobby Miller
The bigger picture makes this weirder and more encouraging at the same time. Sasaki wasn't dominant to start the year, and there was real chatter about whether he'd need a trip to the minors to sort himself out, especially with Blake Snell working his way back into the rotation. He'd also spent months last year nursing that shoulder issue before turning into a lights-out weapon out of the Dodgers' bullpen in the postseason. This start looks like the same trick, just happening in the rotation instead: the stuff was always in there, it just needed the right conditions to show up.
Whether this was a one-night velocity spike or a real step forward is the question the Dodgers now have to answer. If Sasaki can hold anywhere close to this kind of heat deep into games, his prop-bet markets and his long-term trade value both look completely different than they did a week ago. For a season defined by inconsistency, one start against the Yankees just gave everyone a reason to pay attention again.