Dave Roberts, Dodgers fans aren’t on the same page about worry level on Roki Sasaki

Spring training is supposed to be a time for patience. For experimentation. For ironing out the mechanical wrinkles that inevitably appear when pitchers ramp up from offseason workouts to game speed.

But patience has its limits — and right now, the Los Angeles Dodgers fan base and manager Dave Roberts clearly don’t share the same level of calm when it comes to Roki Sasaki.

After Sasaki’s second rocky spring start — a disastrous first inning that featured four straight missed fastballs, two walks, a single, and a grand slam by the Cleveland Guardians' Kyle Manzardo — Roberts quickly downplayed the situation by saying there were "really no concerns."

That statement might make sense internally. The Dodgers see the full picture: bullpen sessions, mechanical tweaks, health reports, and the gradual process of adapting a talented but unfinished pitcher to Major League Baseball.

Fans, however, see something much simpler: pure chaos on the mound. They see a pitcher who couldn’t record an out in the first inning, who threw just eight strikes out of 23 pitches, and whose fastball command disappeared entirely while facing hitters like Steven Kwan and José Ramírez.

And perhaps most importantly, they see a pattern. Because Sasaki’s mechanical inconsistency didn’t start this spring. It dates back to the end of his time in Japan, when the once-mythical flamethrower began looking less like a finished ace and more like a project.

That’s the gap between the organization and the fan base. Where Roberts and the Dodgers see a fixable puzzle, fans only see warning signs.

Dave Roberts may not be worried about Roki Sasaki, but Dodgers fans absolutely are

To be fair, there were encouraging moments Tuesday. After an extended mound conversation with pitching coach Mark Prior, Sasaki straightened his back in his delivery and suddenly looked like a different pitcher. He retired six consecutive hitters and struck out two using his devastating forkball.

For a moment, the magic returned. That’s what makes Sasaki so fascinating — and so frustrating. When everything clicks, he looks like the kind of pitcher who belongs alongside stars like Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto in the Dodgers’ rotation. But when the mechanics fall apart, he can’t throw strikes at all.

In fact, that’s the part Roberts may be underselling publicly. Because Dodgers fans understand something the organization is trying to downplay: the margin for error in October rotations is razor thin. The Dodgers don’t need Sasaki to be perfect, but they do need him to be reliable — and right now, reliability isn’t something anyone can promise.

Roberts may genuinely believe there’s “no concern.” Managers often project calm in order to keep young pitchers from spiraling under pressure. But the fan base doesn’t have that responsibility. They react to what they see — and what they saw this week was a pitcher searching for his delivery, fighting his mechanics, and briefly rediscovering himself only after the damage had already been done.

Spring training is supposed to be about finding answers. For Sasaki, it’s still raising questions.