Roki Sasaki on Sat, Jul 25, 2026

Sasaki's splitter-first approach fuels a season-best 9-strikeout outing

Sasaki delivered one of his best starts of the season against the Mets, going 7.0 innings with 3 hits, 1 earned run, 9 strikeouts, and 2 walks. That's a 4.5 K/BB ratio in a single outing, well above his season-long marks of a 4.71 ERA and 1.29 WHIP across 18 starts this year -- a genuine quality start by any measure, and arguably his cleanest performance of the season.

The pitch-level data explains why it worked so well. Sasaki leaned heavily on his splitter, throwing it 34 times (36% usage) at an average 89.7 mph with a 68% strike rate and a game-high 11 whiffs -- clearly his putaway pitch tonight. His four-seam fastball, averaging a blazing 98.6 mph, actually posted the highest strike rate of the night at 70% across 30 pitches, but generated just 2 whiffs, suggesting it was working more as a count-setter to get ahead than as a swing-and-miss weapon. The slider chipped in 6 whiffs on 28 pitches, giving him three distinct weapons in rotation rather than leaning on one alone. The platoon splits add another layer worth noting: opponents are hitting .241 with an .835 OPS against him this season as right-handed batters, compared to a lower .237 average and .755 OPS from left-handed batters. That's an unusual reverse-platoon pattern for a right-hander, and it lines up neatly with how effective a splitter tends to be against opposite-side, left-handed hitters specifically.

Looking back over his last ten outings, Sasaki hit a rough patch on June 13 against the White Sox (4.1 IP, 7 ER) and again on July 3 against the Padres (3.0 IP, 6 ER), but he's now strung together two consecutive strong starts since the July 18 outing against the Yankees (5.2 IP, 0 ER, 5 K). Whether he can keep leaning on that splitter-first sequencing will likely determine how much further his ERA and WHIP can come down from here. Unico's takeaway: this reverse-platoon, splitter-driven approach looks like the blueprint for Sasaki's turnaround.