Roki Sasaki's velocity struggles make fans wonder how Dodgers enticed him in the first place

The Dodgers won their second game against the Diamondbacks on Friday, but the Dodgers 'pitchers were almost actively working against their offense from the start. Roki Sasaki was on the bump for his eighth start of the season, and was coming off of two almost identical middling starts. He pitched 5 2/3 innings against the Pirates on April 26, gave up five hits, three earned runs (including a homer), two walks, hit a batter, and struck out four. His next time out on May 3, he went five innings, gave up four hits, three earned runs (including a homer), two walks, hit a batter, and struck out four.

Sasaki took the mound against the Diamondbacks to prove that he wasn't going to plateau as a 5.00ish ERA guy, but he ended up looking even worse. He gave up a one-out homer to Ketel Marte in the bottom of the first, then a two-run homer to Eugenio Suarez later that inning. He wasn't responsible for giving up Lourdes Gurriel's game-tying grand slam in the bottom of the fifth, but he did get tagged with one more run (fifth of the day) after a Gurriel RBI groundout in the fourth, walking Marte before being replaced by Anthony Banda.

After the outing, Dave Roberts said that he was more concerned about Sasaki's command than his velocity, even though his fastball is averaging 96 MPH when it used to be able to reliably hit 99. Sure, we should worry about Sasaki's command, but there's a well-known anecdote about how the Dodgers landed Sasaki in the first place that comes to mind here.

He asked teams to tell him why he'd lost his velocity in his last year in NPB. The Dodgers must've answered the question satisfactorily but, whatever that answer was, why isn't it working now?

Dodgers not being able to figure out Roki Sasaki's fastball problems are a lingering red flag

Roberts said, "If you don't have velocity when you're talking 98, 99, then command becomes more of a priority. When you're throwing mid-90s, 94, then you have to really command the baseball. So that's what we're going to work on as a group."

So, basically, there are problems all around and nothing is really clicking. Sasaki is far from a veteran who has naturally lost velocity on his once-great fastball because of his age; he's only 23. It makes sense that the Dodgers would want to switch focus to command because it's something they can actually teach while puzzling out where his velocity went and how to get it back, but these things should be happening in tandem.

Roberts said he isn't worried about Sasaki's velocity, but maybe he should be. This has clearly been an ongoing issue, and whatever solution the Dodgers presented to him, which was good enough to land him, isn't working.