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The Dodgers identified that Roki Sasaki was tipping his pitches and have since worked to correct the issue, per DodgerBlue.com. The concern arose specifically from Sasaki’s July 2 start against the San Diego Padres, in which he was hit hard. Heading into Wednesday’s start against the Colorado Rockies, Sasaki had allowed 12 runs over his last 12 2/3 innings — an ugly stretch by any standard. The team says they’ve now “addressed” and “cleaned up” the problem.

Pitch tipping is one of those things that can quietly wreck a pitcher before anyone figures out what’s going on. For Sasaki, whose arsenal relies heavily on deception — a fastball that sits in the upper 90s and a devastating splitter — tipping even slightly can be the difference between unhittable and very hittable. Hitters at the major league level are too good. If they know what’s coming, even elite stuff gets punished. Twelve runs in 12 2/3 innings is the kind of damage that happens when a lineup is sitting on pitches with confidence.

Sasaki’s first season in the majors has been a fascinating ride. He came over from Japan’s NPB with enormous expectations — the guy threw a perfect game in Japan at 20 years old and routinely touched triple digits. His early outings with the Dodgers showed flashes of that dominant ceiling, but he’s also had to adjust to a new league, a new ball, a new routine, and lineups that prepare differently than anything he faced in the Pacific League. Rough patches were always part of the equation. The key is identifying why they happen and fixing them quickly, and that’s exactly what the coaching staff appears to have done here.

I think the pitch-tipping explanation actually makes me feel better about Sasaki’s recent struggles, not worse. If the issue were mechanical — something fundamentally off with his arm action or his release point — that would be a longer-term concern. Pitch tipping is fixable. It’s a tell, a habit, something in the set position or the glove or the grip that a sharp opposing advance scout picked up. Once you know that’s the problem, you can isolate it and correct it. The fact that the Dodgers caught it and addressed it before Wednesday’s outing is encouraging.

For our rotation, this matters a lot. We’re heading into the All-Star break with Walker Buehler anchoring things, Yoshinobu Yamamoto dealing with his own workload questions, and Blake Snell and Tony Gonsolin still working back from injuries. We need Sasaki pitching like the guy we thought we were getting. If the tipping issue was genuinely the root cause of his rough July, then the version of Sasaki we see going forward should look a lot more like the one who was carving up lineups earlier in the season. That’s the hope, and based on what the team is saying, it sounds like a legitimate fix rather than a hopeful guess.

The second half of this season is going to demand a lot from our pitching staff. Getting Sasaki right — mechanically, mentally, and now apparently in terms of pitch concealment — is one of the most important things the Dodgers can do between now and October. This is a good sign that they’re on top of it.

Source(s): Staff (DodgerBlue.com) | First reported: July 9, 2026 6:29 PM UTC

God Bless and Go Dodgers