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Roki Sasaki didn’t just dominate the Yankees in Friday’s second-half opener — he made Dodgers history doing it. Over 5.2 innings, Sasaki threw 21 pitches clocked at 100 mph or higher, breaking the franchise record of 20 set by Bobby Miller, per Dodger Blue staff reporting.

Let that sit for a second. Twenty-one triple-digit pitches in a single outing. We knew Sasaki had elite velocity — that was the whole draw when the Dodgers signed him out of Japan before the 2025 season. He’d been clocked consistently in the high-90s and touching triple digits throughout his NPB career with the Chiba Lotte Marines, where he famously threw a perfect game in April 2022 at just 20 years old (striking out 19 in the process). But there’s a difference between flashing 100 and sustaining it at this volume in a major league game. This is Sasaki showing he’s not just maintaining his arm strength through the grind of a full MLB season — he’s peaking at the right time.

The previous record holder, Miller, set the mark during his promising 2023 rookie campaign. Miller came up throwing serious heat and looked like a potential frontline starter before injuries knocked him off track. The fact that Sasaki topped that number — and did it deep into the second half — tells you something about the caliber of arm we’re watching.

What makes this particularly encouraging isn’t just the raw velocity. It’s the context. Sasaki came into the year with real questions about workload management. He’d never pitched a full MLB season before, and the Dodgers have been cautious with his innings. There were stretches earlier this year where the fastball sat more in the 97-98 range, which was still effective but hinted at the organization throttling him a bit. To see him uncork 21 pitches at 100-plus in mid-July — after the All-Star break, in the second half — suggests the Dodgers’ plan to keep him fresh is working exactly as intended.

I keep coming back to what this means for October. We already know Shohei Ohtani is the ace of this staff, but a Sasaki who’s throwing this hard in July has the look of a pitcher who could be absolutely devastating in a short postseason series. The velocity is one thing, but Sasaki pairs it with that splitter that just disappears — and when the fastball is sitting at 100, the split becomes nearly unhittable. That combination is special.

For the Dodgers, this is exactly the kind of development that separates a good rotation from a historically great one. We’ve got Ohtani at the top, Sasaki throwing harder than anyone in franchise history on a per-start basis, and the depth behind them to manage workloads carefully. This team was already built to win in October. A Sasaki who’s throwing 100 mph with this kind of regularity makes that path a whole lot more convincing.

Source(s): Staff (Dodger Blue) | First reported: July 18, 2026 7:46 PM UTC

God Bless and Go Dodgers