Sasaki’s Splitter Betrayed Him — and the White Sox Made the Dodgers Pay

For five innings, Roki Sasaki looked like the pitcher who had been quietly building momentum. Then the fifth inning happened, and the Chicago White Sox turned a tight game into a blowout.

The Los Angeles Dodgers fell 8-2 on Friday night in a loss that manager Dave Roberts didn’t try to sugarcoat. Sasaki carried a 2-1 lead into the bottom of the fifth before everything unraveled. By the time the inning ended, the young right-hander had surrendered seven runs — and the game was effectively over.

Speaking to SportsNet LA after the game, Roberts pointed to a specific mechanical issue rather than any broader concern about Sasaki’s arm or future. The problem, he said, wasn’t velocity — it was location.

“I don’t think Roque’s stuff was as crisp as it has been recently,” Roberts said. “You can see that he couldn’t land the split, really didn’t have command of it.”

The splitter is supposed to be Sasaki’s signature weapon. On Friday, it became a liability. Without it, he had to lean on a fastball that, while live, wasn’t enough to keep Chicago off balance.

A chain reaction in the fifth

Roberts walked through the sequence that turned the game. A leadoff walk. A soft flare that found grass. A missed double-play opportunity that could have erased the inning. More free passes. It was death by paper cuts — except the cuts kept getting deeper.

“So all that stuff kind of led to that big inning,” Roberts added.

The loss pushed Sasaki’s ERA to 4.76 across 12 appearances this season. But the Dodgers still sit atop the NL West at 44-26, and Roberts made clear that one ugly start doesn’t erase what Sasaki had built before it.

Roberts: Trust remains intact

“I think he’s in a good spot. Certainly it’s not the outcome that we wanted,” Roberts said. “I thought the fastball velocity was good. The fastball had good life to it. I just thought he just couldn’t command that split.”

Sasaki had entered the game on a strong stretch, showing growing comfort on a major league mound. That progress hasn’t been wiped out — but Friday offered a reminder that development isn’t linear.

“He’s on a good run. He really is,” Roberts said. “And so it is a good test for a young player that, you know, after he has one like this, how he responds.”

The answer to that question will come in Sasaki’s next start. The Dodgers aren’t panicking. But in a division race where every game matters, the margin for error is thin — and the splitter needs to show up.