For Roki Sasaki's Next Role With Dodgers, Evaluator Makes Bold Prediction

Dodgers pitcher Roki Sasaki's rookie year in Major League Baseball began with Rookie of the Year Award chatter, was interrupted by a shoulder injury, and ended with an occasionally rocky road in the Dodgers' postseason bullpen.

There's more good news than bad surrounding Sasaki. He signed for a well below-market minor league contract coming out of Japan because he did not meet the requirements to be posted as a major league free agent under the agreement between Major League Baseball and NPB, the top league in Japan.

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That means the Dodgers have Sasaki under control for five more years, with little room to regret his $6.5 million signing bonus. He's even eligible for the 2026 National League Rookie of the Year Award after pitching only 36.1 innings during the 2025 regular season.

Still, the two chapters bookending Sasaki's first season in the big leagues yielded dramatically different results.

Sasaki went 1-1 with a 4.72 ERA in eight games as a starter. He pitched more than five innings only twice. In 12 innings as a reliever between September and October, Sasaki allowed seven hits, struck out 10 batters, and allowed one run (0.75 ERA).

President of Baseball Ops Andrew Friedman on Roki Sasaki's transition from starter to @Dodgers postseason closer. pic.twitter.com/2YBkasUobl
— Jim Rome (@jimrome) October 21, 2025

Sasaki's second act was a godsend for a bullpen that was reeling from the injuries and/or poor performances of veterans Tanner Scott, Blake Treinen, Evan Phillips, and Kirby Yates.

FanGraphs' lead prospect evaluator, Eric Longenhagen, said in an appearance on the Effectively Wild podcast this week that Sasaki is "probably a closer" going forward.

"If you twisted my arm, I'd say Roki is probably a closer going forward," Longenhagen said. "He's probably a best fit in that role because I am skeptical that the command piece of it is going to develop to a satisfactory degree.

"If his fastball played more like Sheehan's does, he'd have more margin for error in that regard because you can miss a little bit when your fastball has that kind of life — not just that amount of life, but the type of movement it has. ... So the command piece of it has got to arrive for him if his fastball's going to be less vulnerable. And I don't know how you get to that point without trying to develop him in that role."

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Sasaki was initially hesitant to move to the bullpen at midseason. It isn't hard to see why — he had enormous success as a starter in Japan, prompting a massive bidding war among MLB teams last winter.

Last year, Sasaki went 10-5 with a 2.35 ERA in 18 starts for the NPB's Chiba Lotte Marines, with 129 strikeouts in 111 innings. Between his NPB career and his standout performance for Team Japan in the 2023 World Baseball Classic him one of the most coveted pitchers ever to come to the U.S. from Japan.

From the outset of the season, Dodgers executives and manager Dave Roberts preached patience with Sasaki, who turned 24 on Monday. The Dodgers might ultimately grant Sasaki his request to begin next season as a starter, too, to see if he can regain the form that allowed him to thrive in Japan.

If Longenhagen is correct, however, Sasaki could be back in the bullpen before long.

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