Dodgers overcome Roki Sasakis poor performance to

Roki Sasaki’s abysmal look pale away in the Dodgers’ 12-7 win over the San Diego Padres on Thursday evening, but only after the National League West leaders rose from a catatonic first inning.

The Dodgers roared back from a 6-0 deficit as Andy Pages skirted a tying double down the left-field line, and Mookie Betts and Max Muncy each drove in runs to give them the lead for good in a four-run fourth inning. All of which despatched the sold-out Dodger Stadium crowd into jubilant celebrations, some leaping, others breaking out World Cup chants.

“Thankfully, it played out the way I didn’t expect,” supervisor Dave Roberts said of the crew’s potential to flip the sport around, “or the way it started.”

By the time the sport ended, Sasaki’s three-inning start appeared like a murky nightmare the Dodgers awoke from in a sweat. Except the Dodgers weren’t dreaming, and the crew hadn’t performed a lot to assuage the issues with Sasaki.

The downside with Sasaki isn’t his stuff. On his best nights, when the rate and command mix, Sasaki blows past batters with a triple-digit fastball and cutting off-speed pitches. The downside has been how to tick the radar without making the strike zone appear to be a Jackson Pollock portray — and just lately, it has.

Sasaki’s June swoon, impervious to the calendar change, continued into Thursday’s sequence opener against the Padres, in which the right-hander gave up three home runs among seven hits before Roberts called it quits going into the fourth inning.

“They were on everything,” Roberts said. “You could see it.”

One potential concern? Tipping pitches. While Roberts and catcher Dalton Rushing said the crew would need to do more research into Sasaki’s start, both left the door open to this reply.

“That would be a big explanation as to how they felt like they were on every pitch,” Rushing said.

As San Diego chugged through its lineup, Sasaki struggled to keep up. With his first pitch, he gave up a double to Fernando Tatis Jr., who scored on Manny Machado’s home run that left middle fielder Pages staring at the ball’s path as it plopped down on the other aspect of the blue outfield fence.

The inning was only a preview of the Padres’ energy. Each of the 9 San Diego batters received his probability against Sasaki in the second, and the crew rapidly dug the Dodgers into a six-run gap. He surrendered two home runs in the second inning. Jackson Merrill blasted a ball to left-center area main off, and, two outs later, Jake Cronenworth drove in two runs with a shot to right-center.

Sasaki said through interpreter Kensuke Okubo that he needed to work on his command, but he felt like his fastball was good.

“I don’t think my stuff was bad today,” Sasaki said. “Overall, it wasn’t great but a lot of things evolved.”

Part of Sasaki’s issue lies with his strategy. Roberts said he desires the second-year pitcher to be aggressive, to play the cat-and-mouse recreation required to beat batters in the box. But when given the chance, Sasaki has shrunken in latest outings, struggling with his command and his potential to pitch deep into video games.

“We had a great May, so let’s just get back to competing and making pitches,” Roberts said.

When reliever Will Klein walked out to the mound in the fourth to the aggressive, rambunctious clamor of the Dropkick Murphys’ “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” and collected two scoreless, one-hit innings, the aid was speedy: The Dodgers took the lead.

The lineup already was revving, as Rushing homered in the second inning while Sasaki was still in the sport, and both Kyle Tucker and Muncy drove in runs off starter Randy Vasquez in the third, cutting the deficit to two. The Dodgers broke through against the Padres’ bullpen to rating six runs in the fourth and fifth innings.

“The bullpen was fantastic tonight, and then the offense came up big,” Roberts said.

A late catch by Pages helped close out the sport after he gloved a ball despite ramming into the padding of the middle area wall. A mixed effort by Paul Gervase and Tanner Scott shut down San Diego’s ninth-inning momentum after it pushed across a run.

“Turned back around, was able to find the ball and make a really good catch right there,” Tucker said of Pages. “That was a huge out.”

The Dodgers (57-31) beat their division rivals for the fifth time in seven video games to open a 13-game lead over both San Diego and Arizona. The Padres, meanwhile, have misplaced six straight and given up 66 runs over the last six days, the most in such a span in franchise historical past.

But San Diego’s flaws don’t negate the Dodgers’ as they burned through six relievers in their win. So, while the Dodgers crawled out of the outlet with a season-high 17 hits, the steep value heightens the stress on the remaining of the rotation the remaining of the sequence.