{"id":448804,"date":"2026-01-31T04:20:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T04:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/448804\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T04:20:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T04:20:07","slug":"dodgers-rotation-notes-snell-yamamoto-sasaki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/448804\/","title":{"rendered":"Dodgers Rotation Notes: Snell, Yamamoto, Sasaki"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Dodgers have made free agent moves in the lineup (Kyle Tucker<\/a>) and bullpen (Edwin D\u00edaz<\/a>) to further load up the sport\u2019s best roster. They\u2019ve mostly sat out the rotation, confident in their internal arms.<\/p>\n

L.A.\u2019s pitching staff has carried heavy workloads on their runs to consecutive World Series. Jack Harris of The California Post<\/a>\u00a0writes that the club plans to keep a close eye on their veteran arms early in the season. That\u2019s particularly true of\u00a0Blake Snell<\/a>, who tells Harris that he delayed his offseason throwing program after feeling \u201cexhausted\u201d at the end of the Fall Classic. The two-time Cy Young winner added that while he\u2019s hopeful of being ready for Opening Day, that\u2019s not a guarantee since the team is more focused on making sure he doesn\u2019t put too much stress on his arm in camp.<\/p>\n

Snell is among the three to five most talented pitchers in MLB. He\u2019s dominant when healthy but availability has never been his strong suit. Snell has a pair of 180-inning campaigns but hasn\u2019t reached even 130 frames in any of his other seven full seasons. Last year, he missed more than three months between April and the beginning of August with a shoulder issue. He was limited to 11 starts and 61 1\/3 innings during the regular season.<\/p>\n

He was around when it mattered most, logging 34 innings of 3.18 ERA ball during the World Series run. Snell started one game apiece in the Wild Card Series, Division Series and Championship Series. He worked at least six innings in each, including eight frames of shutout ball with 10 strikeouts in the first game of the NLCS, then came back for two more starts in the World Series.<\/p>\n

Snell went five innings in Game 1 and logged 6 2\/3 frames in Game 5. He gave up five runs and took the loss in both, but he came back on two days rest for his most important outing of the season. Snell logged an inning and a third out of the bullpen in Game 7, keeping a 4-3 deficit at one run to set up Miguel Rojas\u2019<\/a>\u00a0game-tying homer before coming back for the start of the bottom of the ninth.<\/p>\n

Yoshinobu Yamamoto<\/a> nevertheless outshone Snell in the Fall Classic. He deservedly took home Series MVP honors after getting the win in three of L.A.\u2019s four victories. Yamamoto tossed consecutive complete games in Games 2 of the NLCS and World Series. He went six innings in Game 6, then came back on zero rest for 2 2\/3 frames and 34 pitches as the decider went into extras. Yamamoto\u2019s arm was so fatigued by the end of that game that he couldn\u2019t lift his MVP trophy above his head without help from teammates.<\/p>\n

Yamamoto won\u2019t have the luxury of a slow spring buildup, as he has already signed on to try to help Japan defend their World Baseball Classic title. He\u2019ll need to be ready for competitive game action when the tournament gets underway on March 6.\u00a0Shohei Ohtani<\/a> is also on the Japanese roster, though the team hasn\u2019t announced whether he\u2019ll pitch in the tournament.<\/p>\n

Roki Sasaki<\/a> is not expected to play in the WBC. His first major league season was up and down. He only made 10 appearances and logged 36 1\/3 MLB innings during the regular season. Sasaki was out between April and September with a shoulder impingement. The Dodgers used him in short relief in the playoffs. Sasaki managed 10 2\/3 innings of one-run ball despite walking five while recording only six strikeouts.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers have maintained they view Sasaki as a starter going into 2026. Manager Dave Roberts reiterated as much when speaking with The California Post\u2019s Dylan Hernandez<\/a> this week, albeit with the note that he\u2019d like the talented young righty to better develop his third pitch. Sasaki used his fastball half the time and his trademark splitter on around a third of his offerings last year. He used a low-80s breaking ball at roughly a 16% clip.<\/p>\n

President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman appeared on Dodgers Territory<\/a> this week and downplayed Sasaki\u2019s need for a third pitch to an extent. \u201cHe was able to dominate in NPB with two pitches and frankly, I think he could here as well with being able to execute at a higher level,\u201d Friedman said. \u201cLast year, his delivery was out of whack, velocity was down a little bit. So it\u2019s either adding that third pitch or elevating the pitch-making ability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sasaki\u2019s fastball was in the upper-90s and routinely touched triple digits in Japan. He averaged a solid but more pedestrian 96.1 MPH during his rookie season in the majors. Better health will hopefully lead to an uptick in stuff in year two. Sasaki projects as the fifth or sixth starter in a rotation that would likely also comprise Yamamoto, Snell, Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow<\/a> and\u00a0Emmet Sheehan<\/a> if everyone is available on Opening Day.\u00a0River Ryan<\/a>, Gavin Stone<\/a> and\u00a0Kyle Hurt<\/a> should all be back from surgeries that cost them the \u201925 season and are talented depth arms on the 40-man roster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dodgers have made free agent moves in the lineup (Kyle Tucker) and bullpen (Edwin D\u00edaz) to further…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,5781,591,6110,85,47542],"class_list":["post-448804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-blake-snell","tag-mlb","tag-roki-sasaki","tag-sports","tag-yoshinobu-yamamoto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}