Roki Sasaki Walked Five Padres in L.A.’s Loss. His Honest Review Says Everything.

The Los Angeles Dodgers still own first place in the NL West. That part is not changing after Friday night. But how they lost 7-1 to the San Diego Padres at Petco Park raised a real question about the guy they handed the ball to.

Roki Sasaki lasted four innings. He gave up three hits and three earned runs. The bigger number was five walks. That is a lot of free passes for a pitcher with his kind of stuff. Ty France made him pay with a three-run homer that followed two of those walks, and the game basically ended right there.

Sasaki did not sugarcoat it afterward. Through interpreter Kensuke Okubo, per MLB.com’s Sonja Chen, he said: “Today’s game, I really struggled to throw strikes. There’s a lot of things I need to work on, and I need to go over that.”

That is about as blunt as you get from a young pitcher. No deflection. No blaming the umpire or the baseball. Just a guy saying he could not find the zone.

The Dodgers can afford this loss. The concern is what it says about October.

Los Angeles is 52-30. San Diego is 43-37. That nine-game gap means one Friday in July is not a crisis. Mookie Betts hit a solo homer, and that was the only run the Dodgers could scratch together. The lineup missed chances. The bullpen could not stop the bleeding. It happens.

But Sasaki’s 4.88 ERA and minus-0.2 WAR are starting to look like a pattern, not a blip. His fastball and splitter still make scouts drool. The results are not matching the scouting report. For a team that builds its whole identity around winning in October, that mismatch matters.

The Padres did not swing at bad pitches. They waited. They worked counts. And when Sasaki left one over the plate, France crushed it. That is exactly what playoff teams do to pitchers who cannot command the zone.

So what comes next for Sasaki?

The Dodgers have time. They have depth. They have a front office that usually figures this stuff out. But Sasaki’s next start will carry more weight than a typical midseason outing. Fans will watch the walk count. The Padres will be watching too, especially if these two teams meet again in September or October.

For now, the NL West lead is safe. But trust is earned in the regular season, not assumed in the playoffs. And Sasaki knows he has to earn it back.