fastball

PHILADELPHIA — On the mound, he self-destructed in a second inning that nearly placed the game out of his team’s reach.

In the batter’s box, he struck out four times for only the seventh time in his career.

A two-way player for the first time in a postseason game, Shohei Ohtani didn’t save the Dodgers on Saturday night.

Instead, Ohtani was the one being saved in a 5-3 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 1 of their National League Division Series.

He was saved by Tyler Glasnow, Alex Vesia and Roki Sasaki, who combined to shut down the lethal Phillies lineup over the last three innings.

He was saved by a two-run double by Kike Hernández in the sixth inning that reduced their deficit to 3-2.

He was saved by a three-run blast by Teoscar Hernández in the seventh that moved them in front, 5-3.

Ohtani said in Japanese of Hernandez’s go-ahead homer: “It was a wonderful moment. I think it was the kind of moment that made you think, ‘This is the postseason.’”

The victory cleared a path for the Dodgers to defend a World Series title that once felt indefensible. By stealing the road win necessary to advance, the Dodgers have taken control of this best-of-five series against the Phillies, who could be the greatest obstacle in their World Series defense.

The Dodgers should have the edge in starting pitching over the next two games, as Blake Snell is scheduled to start Game 2 on Monday and Yoshinobu Yamamoto Game 3 on Wednesday at Dodger Stadium.

If a fifth game is required to decide this NLDS, Ohtani will be able to pitch on six-days’ rest.

Who could have imagined the Dodgers would be in this position after a game in which Ohtani staggered through a three-run second inning that left him looking as if he was eaten alive by the notoriously hostile Citizens Bank Park crowd?

“He’s not always going to be perfect,” Roberts said.

That being said, Roberts was quick to point out Ohtani’s contributions.

How after that brutal second inning, Ohtani pitched four scoreless innings to keep the Dodgers within striking distance. How Ohtani showed bunt and stepped out of the batter’s box in his ninth-inning at-bat as part of a plan to buy more time for Sasaki to warm up to close the game.

Ohtani sounded particularly proud of how he struck out NL home run king Kyle Schwarber for the third out of the fifth inning. The Phillies stranded two runners.

“I think it might have been a scene that decided the direction of the game,” Ohtani said.

The Dodgers scored two runs in the next innings and three in the inning after that.

“To kind of look at the at-bats that he took tonight and how he struggled offensively, but to separate that and just be a pitcher and weather that [second] inning and to go out there and give us six innings and keep us in the ballgame, I just don’t know any human that can manage those emotions,” Roberts said.

The comeback was necessary because of a second inning that started with a walk by Alec Bohm. Midway through the at-bat of the next hitter, Brandon Marsh, the Citizens Bank Park crowd started to taunt Ohtani.

Sho-hei!

Sho-hei!

Marsh singled. Ohtani responded by reaching back and throwing a 100.2-mph fastball over the heart of the plate to J.T. Realmuto, who launched a rocket into right-center field.

Heavy-footed right fielder Teoscar Hernandez failed to cut off the ball, which skipped to the outfield wall. Bohm and Marsh scored.

Realmuto reached third and scored two batters later on a sacrifice fly by Harrison Bader.

Just like that, the Dodgers were down, 3-0.

This was not the start envisioned by the Dodgers, who set up Ohtani to be the star of this series.

The Dodgers didn’t send Ohtani to the mound in either of their two games of the previous round against the Cincinnati Reds.

By starting Snell and Yamamoto in the wild-card series, the Dodgers were able to save Ohtani for Game 1 of their series against the more formidable Phillies.

The Dodgers entered the NLDS reveling in the history about to be made by Ohtani, the most valuable player as a designated hitter last season back in the October spotlight to pitch in the postseason for the first time.

“I think as he takes the mound for the bottom half [of the first inning], I’m going to take a moment just to appreciate him doing something unprecedented,” Roberts said before the game.

President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman went as far to make the case that Ohtani was underrated.

“I just don’t think the human brain can comprehend what he does and how difficult it is and how he is elite at both,” Friedman said. “The passion he has for hitting and the passion he has for pitching, it doesn’t seem like there’s enough passion to go around, but there is with him.”

Ohtani didn’t pitch last season as he was recovering from an elbow operation he underwent in 2023. Friedman recalled the diligence with which he rehabilitated.

“It wasn’t just about pitching for him,” Friedman said. “It was about pitching really well.”

Ohtani didn’t pitch really well on Saturday night, but he will have a chance to pitch really well in the days and weeks ahead.

His team gifted him the opportunity.

PHILADELPHIA — Two innings into Game 1 of the National League Division Series on Saturday night, the Dodgers had been punched in the mouth.

The Phillies had scored three runs off Shohei Ohtani in the bottom of the second. Citizens Bank Park was shaking on the scale of a small earthquake. And the Dodgers’ offense was doing nothing against Phillies left-hander Cristopher Sánchez.

In the opening contest of a heavyweight series, the defending champions were down.

But, in their typically resilient fashion, far from out.

In a come-from-behind, statement-sending 5-3 win, the Dodgers did again what carried them a championship last October.

They shrugged off the early adversity, with Ohtani conceding no further damage over a six-inning start, finishing his postseason pitching debut with nine strikeouts and four monumental scoreless innings.

Their lineup chipped away at the deficit, knocking Phillies ace and Cy Young Award candidate Sánchez out of the game on Kiké Hernández’s two-out, two-run double in the sixth.

Then, they landed the actual knockout blow, with Teoscar Hernández flipping the game — and the feel of this best-of-five series — with a two-out, three-run, stadium-silencing home run in the seventh.

Game 2 will be back here in South Philadelphia on Monday night. And the Dodgers will go into it with, given the way Saturday started, an unexpected 1-0 series lead.

It could not have started worse for the Dodgers.

Sánchez was carving them up with wicked sinkers and fall-off-the-table changeups. Ohtani, meanwhile, ran into early trouble in the bottom of the second.

The inning started with a walk to Alec Bohm, when Ohtani missed on a full-count fastball. That was followed by a single from Brandon Marsh, who got a down-the-middle fastball in a 2-and-2 count and shot a base hit to center.

Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani delivers during the third inning against the Phillies on Saturday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

As Ohtani tried to settle down, a chorus of taunting chants — Sho-Hei! Sho-Hei! — came raining down.

A crowd of 45,777 was ready to explode.

Then, J.T. Realmuto gave them the chance.

After missing with a first-pitch slider to Realmuto, Ohtani left a 100.2-mph heater in the dead heart of the zone. The location rendered the velocity irrelevant. Realmuto barreled it up, sent a line drive screaming into right-center, then chugged all the way to third after the ball got past Teoscar Hernández in the gap.

A fly ball two batters later — which worked for a sacrifice fly thanks to Hernández’s inability to cut the ball off — made it 3-0.

In the moment (and with the way Sánchez was pitching early), the lead felt almost insurmountable.

The Dodgers, however, didn’t wilt.

The turnaround began with Ohtani, who followed Realmuto’s triple by retiring the next 10 he faced. His only other trouble came in the fifth, when the bottom two hitters in the Phillies’ order reached base with one out. But even then, Ohtani buckled down, getting Trea Turner to line out and Kyle Schwarber to swing through a curveball that ended the inning.

Eventually, the Dodgers’ offense found life too.

With two outs in the sixth, and Sánchez having given up only two hits all night, Freddie Freeman sparked a rally with a five-pitch walk. Tommy Edman took a sinker the other way to put two aboard.

That brought up Kiké Hernández, who had already begun reprising his role of October hero with four hits in the team’s wild-card series sweep of the Cincinnati Reds.

On cue, Hernández came up clutch again, jumping on a slider from Sánchez that caught a little too much plate and roping it down the left-field line for a two-run double — the latter run coming when Edman ran through a stop sign at third base.

Just like that, Sánchez was knocked out of the game. What had been a raucous crowd earlier in the night suddenly grew tense.

That dread only grew in the next-half inning, when Ohtani completed his start with a 1-2-3 bottom of the sixth.

Then, in the seventh, the Dodgers made the comeback complete — getting the biggest swing of the night from another postseason savior, Teoscar Hernández.

Teoscar Hernández celebrates after hitting a three-run home run in the seventh inning for the Dodgers against the Phillies on Saturday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

After Andy Pages led off the inning with a single and Will Smith (who entered the game in the fifth inning for his first appearance of this postseason after missing the wild card round with a fractured hand) was hit by a pitch from David Robertson, the Phillies summoned top left-handed reliever Matt Strahm to face Ohtani.

As he did in his prior three at-bats, Ohtani struck out, taking a fastball down the middle, punching out in four-consecutive at-bats in a game for only the second time in his MLB career.

But by getting Strahm on the mound, the Dodgers had favorable right-on-left matchups behind him. Mookie Betts couldn’t take advantage, popping out to third for the second out of the inning. Hernández, on the other hand, didn’t miss.

On an elevated fastball in a 1-and-0 count, Hernández launched a towering fly ball to the right-center field gap. The Phillies outfield went back on it. But the ball kept carrying into the stands. The ballpark went silent. Hernández practically glided around the bases.

The drama didn’t end there.

Projected Game 4 starter Tyler Glasnow came on in relief in the seventh, when he retired the side on a double-play grounder, then returned for the eighth, when he loaded the bases on a single and two walks. That threat was extinguished by left-hander Alex Vesia, who induced a harmless fly ball from pinch-hitter Edmundo Sosa to quiet a stirring crowd once again.

The ninth inning then belonged to Roki Sasaki, the 23-year-old converted rookie starter who has ascended to closing duties less than two weeks after returning from a months-long shoulder injury. He picked up the save in straightforward fashion, retiring the side in order for his first career save.

PHILADELPHIA — The last time Shohei Ohtani took the mound against the Philadelphia Phillies, it was the first time all year he looked like a true starting pitcher again.

Ohtani, of course, had pitched plenty before that Sept. 16 game at Dodger Stadium, when he spun five no-hit innings against a Phillies team on the verge of a National League East division title. Up to that point, the two-way star had been making starts for the previous three months in his return from a second career Tommy John surgery.

During that stretch, however, Ohtani was under strict limitations. He pitched only one inning in his first two outings, two innings in the pair after that, and continued a slow, gradual build-up over the ensuing weeks. For many of those early starts, the right-hander didn’t even use his full arsenal of pitches, restricting himself to mostly fastballs and sweepers as he tried to hone in on his velocity and sharpen his rusty command.

That was in Ohtani in “rehab mode,” as the Dodgers described it.

The priority remained on protecting his surgically-repaired elbow.

But then came the meeting with the Phillies, in which Ohtani finally looked ready to turn the page.

He completed five innings for only the second all season. He did so with spectacularly dominant ease over just 68 pitches. He used his full mix, from a fastball that topped at 101.7 mph to a slider that induced a 50% whiff rate to a sinker/cutter/splitter combination that had the ball darting different directions to all quadrants of the plate. He collected five strikeouts and walked only one.

“He was phenomenal,” Phillies manager Rob Thompson recalled. “It was the combination of power, control, command, stuff.”

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Three weeks later, Ohtani is set to square off against the Phillies again, in Game 1 of the National League Division Series at Citizens Bank Park on Saturday night.

And this time, he won’t be subjected to the workload restrictions that forced him to make an early exit from that previous no-hit bid.

The plan, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Friday, is to “just treat him like a regular pitcher.”

“This is something we’ve been waiting for all year,” Roberts added, while opening the door for Ohtani to go as many as six or seven innings in what will be his MLB postseason pitching debut. “He’s ready for this moment. So, for me, I’m just going to sit back and watch closely.”

“I’m sure I’ll be nervous at times,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton. “But more than that, I’m just really grateful that I get to play baseball at this time of the year.”

If it hadn’t been for that September start against the Phillies, it’s unclear if Ohtani would be pitching with such freedom now.

That night, Roberts removed Ohtani from his no-hit bid because, as he put it after the game, he didn’t feel comfortable deviating from the the superstars prescripted pitching plan.

What Roberts did do in that game, however, was ask Ohtani how he felt after the fifth inning to gather information the Dodgers could use going forward. Ohtani told Roberts he still felt strong. Thus, in his final regular season start a week later in Arizona, the team allowed him for the first time to pitch into the sixth.

The Dodgers are still trying to be mindful of Ohtani’s two-way burden. He is starting Game 1 of this series (which will be followed by an off day Sunday) because they didn’t want to pitch him early in the wild-card round and then have to hit in subsequent days.

But going forward, president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said, the club plans to use Ohtani like “a normal starting pitcher now.” No more pre-determined restrictions. No more overbearing health considerations.

“I’m very glad that I was able to end the rehab progression at that moment,” Ohtani said while reflecting back on the September start that signaled he was ready. “Just being healthy is really important to me, so I’m just grateful for that.”

Roster and rotation notes

Roberts said, after Ohtani, Blake Snell would likely start Game 2, with Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow lined up for Games 3 and 4. Glasnow will be available out of the bullpen for Game 1 as well.

Clayton Kershaw will be on the team’s NLDS roster, after being left off for the wild-card round. Roberts said he will pitch in a relief role out of the bullpen.

Catcher Will Smith is expected to once again be on the roster as one of three catcher, Roberts said, but his availability to start games remains in question. Though Smith’s right hand fractured has healed, he is still in the process of rebuilding strength and stamina after missing the last few weeks. He was scheduled to take live batting practice during the team’s Monday workout.

The Dodgers aren’t ready to call Roki Sasaki their closer, but who are they kidding?

Sasaki is their closer.

When the 23-year-old rookie from the Japanese countryside stepped onto the October stage on Wednesday night, he revealed himself to be more than the team’s best late-inning option.

He showed he was special.

He was Reggie-Bush-exploding-through-the-Fresno-State-defense special.

He was Allen-Iverson-crossing-up-Michael-Jordan special.

He was Yasiel-Puig-doubling-off-a-runner-for-the-final-out-in-his-debut special.

“Wow,” third baseman Max Muncy said. “Really, all you can say is wow.”

Watching Sasaki pitch the final inning of a two-game sweep of the Cincinnati Reds in their National League wild-card series, the patrons at Dodger Stadium at once recognized the novelty of his act. The same crowd that can’t distinguish home runs from fly balls was chanting his first name throughout the ballpark after just two pitches.

Sasaki threw seven fastballs in the perfect inning, and six of them were faster than 100 mph. The other was clocked at 99.8 mph.

With a forkball that looked as if it were dropping perpendicular to the ground, he struck out the first two batters he faced. Spencer Steer and Gavin Lux had no chance.

“That guy is gross,” reliever Tanner Scott said.

The 11-pitch performance by Sasaki was why the 8-4 victory in Game 2 felt so different from the 10-5 win in Game 1. In both games, the bullpen created messes in the eighth inning. Game 1 left the Dodgers questioning how they could defend their World Series title with such an unreliable group of relievers. Game 2 offered them a vision of how they could realize their ambition.

“That’s what we need right there,” Muncy said.

Sasaki was the last card in the deck for the Dodgers, who gave up on Scott before the playoffs even started. They experimented with some less experienced arms, but none of them performed well. Edgardo Henriquez and Jack Dreyer were part of a dispiriting three-run eighth inning against the Reds in Game 1. Converted starter Emmet Sheehan was part of another eighth-inning meltdown in Game 2, as he retired just one of the five batters he faced, and that was on a sacrifice fly that drove in a run. Sheehan was charged with two runs.

By the time Sasaki started warming up in the bottom of the eighth inning, he might as well have already inherited the closer role by default. The other candidates had pitched their way out of consideration.

Never mind that Sasaki had never pitched in relief in either the United States or Japan until he did so on a recent minor-league rehabilitation assignment. Sasaki pitched out of the bullpen twice in the major leagues in the final days of the regular season, and he was about as promising a bullpen possibility as they had.

So when Sasaki emerged from the bullpen against the Reds, fans in every section of Dodger Stadium stood to applaud. Sasaki represented their final hope.

Once on the mound, Sasaki delivered a performance that was as aesthetically pleasing as it was effective.

The high leg kick. The athletic delivery. The velocity and precision of his fastball.

Words couldn’t accurately describe what he did, so his teammates didn’t bother trying.

“You guys saw the same thing I did,” catcher Ben Rortvedt said.

Dodgers management was reluctant to say anything definitive about Sasaki’s role moving forward.

Was Sasaki the new closer?

“He’s going to get important outs for us,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman replied.

Asked the same question, manager Dave Roberts offered an equally ambiguous answer.

“I trust him,” Roberts said, “and he’s going to pitch in leverage.”

As guarded as Friedman and Roberts were, they couldn’t conceal the truth. Something fundamentally changed for the Dodgers on Wednesday night: They found their ninth-inning pitcher.

Sasaki is their closer.

Dave Roberts often refers to his bullpen hierarchy as something of a “trust tree,” with branches of relievers he can trust in leverage spots.

Right now, however, it’s been more like a shriveled-up houseplant. Barren, depleted and long-shunned from the sun.

On the season, the Dodgers’ 4.33 bullpen ERA ranks 21st in the majors. Since the start of September, that number has climbed to a stunning 5.69 mark. Closer Tanner Scott has converted less than one-third of his save opportunities, his ERA rising to 4.91 after his latest meltdown on Tuesday. Top right-hander Blake Treinen had been the losing pitcher in each of the Dodgers’ five defeats before that, sending his ERA to a career-worst 5.55.

Plenty of others have been responsible for the Dodgers’ late-game incompetence. Kirby Yates has flopped as a veteran offseason signing. Michael Kopech has struggled through injuries and a lack of reliable command. Rookies like Jack Dreyer, Edgardo Henriquez and the since-demoted Ben Casparius have regressed after promising flashes earlier this summer. And the lone reinforcement the front office acquired at what now feels like a regrettably quiet trade deadline, Brock Stewart, is uncertain to return from a bothersome shoulder problem.

It leaves the Dodgers with only one full-time relief arm sporting an ERA under 3.00 this season — Alex Vesia, who has a 2.62 mark in 66 appearances.

It has turned the final days of the regular season into an all-out manhunt for even the slightest of trustworthy playoff options.

“What does that mean?” manager Dave Roberts said, when asked what qualifies as “trust” right now. “It means guys that are gonna take the mound with conviction. That are gonna be on the attack. That are gonna throw strikes, quality strikes, and compete. And be willing to live with whatever result.”

On Wednesday, that’s the backdrop against which Roki Sasaki rejoined the Dodgers’ active roster — the raw and developing 23-year-old rookie pitcher, coming off a five-month absence because of a shoulder injury, returning in hopes of supplying Roberts’ crippling trust tree with an unexpected limb.

Sasaki’s return was not supposed to be this important. Up until a couple weeks ago, his disappointing debut season seemed likely to end with a stint in the minors.

Yet over the last 15 days, circumstances have changed. Sasaki rediscovered 100-mph life on his fastball. He excelled in two relief appearances with triple-A Oklahoma City. And suddenly, he seemed like a potentially better alternative to the slumping names that have repeatedly failed on the Dodgers’ big-league roster.

Thus, the Japanese phenom is back again, activated from the IL before Wednesday’s game as Yates, who has a 5.23 ERA this year and was slipping out of the Dodgers’ postseason plans, was placed on the IL with a hamstring strain.

“I just think [he needs to focus on] giving everything he has for an inning or two at a time, and let the performance play out,” Roberts said of Sasaki. “Just go after guys, and be on the attack.”

Sasaki’s revival began earlier this month, when he went to Arizona after four poor starts in a minor-league rehab assignment to work with the organization’s pitching development coaches.

At that point, Sasaki had lost his tantalizing velocity, hardly even threatening 100 mph since his adrenaline-fueled debut in Tokyo back in March. His command was just as shaky, averaging more than 5 ½ walks per nine innings in his first season stateside. Even his pitch mix required an examination, after his predominantly fastball/splitter arsenal was hammered in both the majors (where he had a 4.72 ERA in eight starts to begin the season) and the minors (where he had a 7.07 ERA in his first four rehab starts) by hitters who could too easily differentiate his stuff.

“Me, him and his translators went in the lab and sat down and watched video for a few hours, and just talked,” said Rob Hill, the Dodgers’ director of pitching who worked with Sasaki at the club’s Arizona facility. “It wasn’t as much solving this like, master plan or whatever. It was moreso helping him actualize the things that he was seeing.”

In Hill’s view, Sasaki’s mechanics had suffered from a shoulder injury that, even before this year, had plagued him since his final season in Japan.

While the two watched film, Hill said they found discrepancies between things Sasaki “still almost thought he was doing” in his delivery, but weren’t translating in how he actually threw the ball.

“I think a lot of it just came from his body changing, the way he was throwing due to throwing hurt for probably a couple years,” Hill said. “He knew what he wanted to do, but he couldn’t quite tap into the way to do it.”

What followed was a series of mechanical tweaks that got Sasaki’s fastball back around 100 and his trademark splitter to more closely mirror his four-seamer when it left his hand. Sasaki also added a cutter-like slider, giving him another weapon with which to confuse hitters and induce more soft contact.

When the right-hander returned to the minors, he struck out eight batters over a solid 4 ⅔-inning, three-run start on Sept. 9. He then impressed with two scoreless appearances in relief last week, after club executives asked Sasaki to experiment in the bullpen.

Now, he is rejoining the Dodgers for the final five games of the season. The team is hopeful that his small sample size of recent success has made him a legitimate postseason relief option.

“I guess it’s fair to say I’m just going to throw him in on the deep end,” Roberts said of how he will use Sasaki going forward, noting there aren’t many “low-leverage” opportunities in an end-of-season division race.

“If we’re expecting him to potentially pitch for us in the postseason, they’re all leverage innings. So I don’t think we’re going to run from putting him in any spot.”

Odds are that Sasaki won’t be a cure-all for the Dodgers’ late-game woes. A pitcher of such little experience and developmental uncertainties is anything but a lock to post zeroes in the playoffs.

Still, the team will take whatever bullpen help it can get. Already, Clayton Kershaw has made himself available for relief appearances and could pitch in late-inning leverage spots in October. Emmet Sheehan also will join the bullpen mix come the playoffs, likely as a multi-inning option to piggyback with starters.

In the meantime, the club is searching for even a couple more reliable arms — just one or two branches on the bullpen’s hierarchy tree for Roberts to trust.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The Dodgers’ sudden need for someone like Sasaki is a reflection of the roster’s underlying flaws. But he will try taking on a potentially critical role in a rookie season that once seemed lost.

“He’s been in the ‘pen for the triple-A team, and he’s been really good,” Roberts said. “So I’m looking forward to seeing it with our club.”

Cleveland Guardians designated hitter David Fry was hit in the face by a 99-mph fastball thrown Tuesday by Detroit Tigers pitcher Tarik Skubal at Ohio’s Progressive Field.

During a sixth-inning at-bat, Fry was attempting to bunt when the ball missed the bat completely and hit him in the nose and mouth area. He fell to the ground and remained there for several minutes while being treated by medical staff.

Fry eventually was able to walk to a cart under his own power. The 2024 American League All-Star gave a thumbs-up signal as he was being driven off the field. The Guardians later said Fry was undergoing tests and observation, possibly overnight, at the Cleveland Clinic Main Campus.

“He’s getting tested,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt told reporters after the game. “He stayed conscious the whole time. Definitely some injuries there, so I’ll give you an update tomorrow on David.”

Vogt added: “We’re all thinking about Dave and his family right now. Obviously, we’re glad he’s OK, but obviously it’s really a scary moment. So [we’re] thinking about him.”

As the incident took place, Skubal reacted in horror from the mound, immediately dropping his glove, removing his cap and covering his face with his hand. The 2024 American League Cy Young Award winner later told reporters it was “really tough” to see Fry like that.

“I’ve already reached out to him. I’m sure his phone is blowing up. I just want to make sure he’s all right,” Skubal said. “Obviously, he seemed like he was OK coming off the field and hopefully it stays that way.

“I know sometimes with those things that can change. So hopefully he’s all right. I look forward to hopefully at some point tonight or [Wednesday] morning getting a text from him and making sure he’s all good because there’s things that are bigger than the game and the health of him is more important than a baseball game.”

Cleveland won the game 5-2 to pull to a tie with Detroit at the top of the AL Central Division after trailing by as many as 15½ games this summer.

A BRAINWAVE test could detect early signs of Alzheimer’s disease in just three minutes – years before clinical diagnosis would even be possible.

Researchers say the test, nicknamed ‘Fastball’, could even be used at home and serve as a cheap tool for those who struggle to get a diagnosis.

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Fastball measures patients’ brain waves through the use of a headset that uses electroencephalogram (EEG) technology.

It records the brain’s automatic response to a series of flashing images displayed on a screen.

Its inventors, from the universities of Bristol and Bath, say it can detect subtle changes to brain waves during the very early stages of dementia.

A £1.5million funding boost from the government will allow it to be tested on 1,000 patients in Bristol to find out if it can be used for mass screening.

Researchers hope the test could slash five years off the average age of diagnosis.

Dementia is often diagnosed too late, they said, up to 20 years after it has started to develop and when it’s already damaged the brain beyond repair.

Currently, diagnosis relies on tests to assess people’s memory, which researchers have previously said can be limited and may be impacted by a person’s education, language skills and whether or not they’re nervous.

They claimed Fastball swerves these issues as the test assesses patients ‘passively’, without requiring participants to follow instructions or recall information.

Dr Liz Coulthard, from the University of Bristol, said: “Patients can wait a long time for diagnosis and some of our current tests can be inaccurate and stressful for them. 

“A quick, easy-to-administer memory test, like Fastball, could transform that.”

A new study, led by experts from the universities of Bath and Bristol and published in the journal Brain Communications, included 52 patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and 54 healthy older adults.

MCI refers to a decline in memory and thinking. Not all cases progress to Alzheimer’s disease, but it can be an early sign and risk factor for the condition.

As well as the Fastball test, patients on the trial also completed a number of neuropsychological assessments that tested their memory, their ability to pay attention and general cognitive function.

Researchers found Fastball could reliably identify memory problems in people with MCI.

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Patients with amnestic MCI – which involves significant memory loss, such as forgetting appointments and recent conversations – showed significantly reduced responses to the Fastball test compared to healthy patients and those with non-amnestic MCI.

Researchers re-tested the group after one year and found Fastball “showed moderate to good test-retest reliability” in healthy older adults.

The study also demonstrated for the first time that the test can be performed in patients’ homes.

Researchers now say the Fastball could also be used in GP surgeries and memory clinics to speed up diagnoses.

Lead author Dr George Stothart, a cognitive neuroscientist in the Department of Psychology at the University of Bath, said: “We’re missing the first 10 to 20 years of Alzheimer’s with current diagnostic tools.

“Fastball offers a way to change that – detecting memory decline far earlier and more objectively, using a quick and passive test.”

Alzheimer’s Society estimates there are around 982,000 people with dementia in the UK, but more than a third do not have a diagnosis.

The number is expected to rise to 1.4 million by 2040.

Dr Stothart added: “There’s an urgent need for accurate, practical tools to diagnose Alzheimer’s at scale. Fastball is cheap, portable and works in real-world settings.”

Chris Williams, chief executive of BRACE Dementia Research, which supported the study, said: “Fastball is an incredible tool that could offer anyone who, for whatever reason, cannot access a dementia diagnosis in a clinical setting.”

Reacting to the findings, Sir John Hardy, professor of neuroscience and group leader at the UK Dementia Research Institute at UCL, said: “Identifying individuals early for cognitive decline is going to be of increasing importance as therapies for Alzheimer’s and other dementias are developed and this protocol Fastball seems as if it may be helpful in this regard.

“What it does not do, and does not claim to do, is distinguish early Alzheimer’s from other causes of decline and this latter is also important.

“Because of this, it is likely that additional tests, biomarker or imaging, would also be needed for this second important aim.”

Dr Julia Dudley, head of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, added: “Too many families face dementia without answers, with one in three people with the condition living without a diagnosis.

“Therefore it’s encouraging to see studies exploring potential ways to detect memory problems earlier.

“This study, in a small group of people, suggests that it can be used to measure mild memory impairment, which for some people can be an early sign of diseases like Alzheimer’s.

“However, as participants were only followed up one year later, we don’t know if those people will definitely go on to develop dementia.

“Longer-term studies in larger, diverse groups of people are needed to find out if this technology can predict how memory problems will unfold over time.”

Barriers to diagnosis

The trial results come as a new report by the Alzheimer’s Society warned that one in five people impacted by dementia receive no support.

A survey, carried out for the charity by Walnut Unlimited, included almost 3,500 impacted by dementia, such as patients, loved ones and unpaid carers.

Just a third said their experience of diagnosis was positive, while 52 per cent faced long wait times and 41 per cent had to see multiple healthcare staff.

Professor Fiona Carragher, chief policy and research officer at Alzheimer’s Society, said: “Almost a million people are living with dementia, yet its scale and the day-to-day realities often remain hidden.

“These findings tell us that far too many people are going without the help they need, whether it’s support after a diagnosis, trained care professionals, or someone to turn to when things get hard.”

The charity also found more than a third (35 per cent) of people living with dementia are scared of getting diagnosed, while 31 per cent are apprehensive about talking to healthcare professionals.

Professor Carragher said: “An early and accurate diagnosis is vital to enable people living with dementia to access the care, support and treatments they so desperately need.

“Those who have been able to access these treatments experienced benefits, but we simply aren’t diagnosing people early or accurately enough to see current and prospective treatments rolled out widely.”

SAN DIEGO — The Dodgers finally landed a lot of little jabs as an offense Sunday against the San Diego Padres.

And in a pivotal, sweep-evading 8-2 win at Petco Park — which once again tied the two teams for first place in the National League West standings — it allowed their slumping lineup to deliver some badly needed knockout blows.

For the first time this weekend, the Dodgers looked like themselves at the plate.

They bashed four home runs, none bigger than a tie-breaking three-run shot from backup catcher Dalton Rushing in the seventh that ultimately decided the game.

They strung together seven hits and four walks, cracking a Padres pitching staff that had smothered them over the first two games in this rivalry’s final renewal of the season.

Most importantly, however, they did all the little things that have too often gone missing during their recent two-month funk; one in which they’ve ranked 24th in the majors in scoring since the start of July, and let what was once a nine-game lead in the division turn into a dogfight down the stretch.

They extended at-bats. Battled with two strikes. And, at long last, earned the kind of pitches their star-studded roster could wallop.

“For us to come out here and execute as an offense, way better than we did the last couple days, that’s a big boost for us,” said first baseman Freddie Freeman, who had two home runs to help the Dodgers salvage the series finale.

“When you expand the zone, the slugging percentage is going to go down, because pitchers are going to continue to expand,” manager Dave Roberts added. “But when you earn good counts and get good pitches, control the zone, then slug happens. You can’t always chase it. Which, I thought, today we did a really good job of.

Ahead of first pitch, Roberts spoke at length about the team’s recent offensive struggles — following up on his Saturday night critique of the club’s increasingly all-or-nothing approach.

“We haven’t really been in-sync,” Roberts said. “It’s been disjointed a lot, as far as the offense.”

Freddie Freeman, right, is congratulated by third base coach Dino Ebel after hitting a home run in the sixth inning Sunday.

(Derrick Tuskan / Associated Press)

When asked if that meant his team needed to adopt more of a small-ball mentality, however, Roberts pushed back.

“I think it’s a fair question,” he said. “But I couldn’t disagree more.”

After all, his team is still stocked full of All-Stars, MVPs and future Hall of Famers. At their core, they are built to bludgeon opponents — not slap singles and drop down sacrifice bunts.

“Slugging is still a part of it,” he said. “I definitely don’t want guys to hit like I did.”

Around the margins, though, there were ways Roberts felt the Dodgers (74-57) could better position themselves to do that. Like trying to work better counts, stay alive with two strikes, and striking a better balance between patience and aggression.

“I want my cake, and [to] eat it as well,” he quipped, a devilish smile on his face.

“I’d be shocked,” he added, “if we don’t see a different offensive output from here forward, starting today.”

The change started in the first inning, with the Dodgers putting Padres starter Nick Pivetta under immediate stress.

Shohei Ohtani drew a five-pitch leadoff walk. Mookie Betts shortened up his swing on an 0-and-2 slider to line a single up the middle. Freeman loaded the bases by grinding out a full-count free pass.

It was a string of small victories, that provided cleanup hitter Teoscar Hernández the perfect chance to slug.

Hernández tried to, getting a fastball over the plate in a 3-and-1 count and launching a deep fly ball that seemed destined to be a grand slam. The drive, however, hung up just enough for Ramón Laureano to rob it at the wall.

The sacrifice fly brought in the Dodgers’ only run of the inning — giving them a 1-0 lead that would soon be erased on Elias Díaz’s two-run homer in the third off Yoshinobu Yamamoto (the only runs he allowed in a six-inning start).

Dodgers starting pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto delivers against the Padres in the first inning Sunday.

(Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

Still, it set the tone for a flurry of offense that would follow, when a weekend of non-existent offense finally started to turn.

“Getting the guys on and scoring in that first inning was huge,” Freeman sad. “Even though we could have got more out of it, just getting one run across was a good boost for us coming off the last couple games.”

In the sixth, Freeman hit his first home run of the day, crushing another center-cut fastball from Pivetta to right-center for a tying blast.

Then, against Padres reliever Jeremiah Estrada in the seventh, the club put all the pieces together in a five-run rally.

Andy Pages rolled a single through the left side to lead off. Michael Conforto came up next, fouled off a full-count slider, then took a borderline fastball at the top of the zone for a stress-inducing walk.

Miguel Rojas couldn’t get a bunt down after that, eventually swinging away for a fly out to center.

But, in what was easily his best moment of a trying rookie season, Rushing connected on the fatal blow seven pitches later — resetting after a bad first strike call, fouling off his own two-strike slider to keep the at-bat alive, then clobbering another slider to right for his go-ahead three-run homer.

“When I’m in the box and I get put in a hole, it’s almost like, ‘All right, I’m going to find my way out,’” said Rushing, who entered the day batting just .184 with two home runs. “I kind of played the game with him. He threw every pitch that he had, and I was totally banking on just being able to put a good swing on the ball whatever he threw.”

“I think today,” Roberts added, “was a big step in the right direction for him.”

The same, of course, was true of the Dodgers’ entire offense — which also got a second homer from Freeman later in the seventh, then another when Ohtani belted his 45th homer of the season in the ninth.

They got back to doing the little things right. They reeled off one big swing after another as a result.

“Today was more indicative of what we’re going to do, we expect, going forward,” Roberts said. “The fight, the grind, taking what the pitcher is giving you — and then if there’s slug there, it’s there. Just the byproduct of good at-bats all day.”

SAN DIEGO — The San Diego Padres’ bullpen is considered one of the best in baseball. Their lineup, revamped by a couple of key trade deadline acquisitions, at least rivals the recently inconsistent version the Dodgers have gotten out of theirs.

But this weekend, with first place on the line in the teams’ final meeting this season, the Dodgers were supposed to have one distinct advantage.

Their starting rotation was healthy, fresh and lined up to throw three of its best arms at Petco Park.

The Padres, on the other hand, were banged up and starting three veterans with a collective earned-run average north of 5.00.

Yeah … so much for all that.

For the second-straight night on Saturday, in San Diego’s 5-1 win, a Padres starter unexpectedly dominated the Dodgers, while a Dodgers starter disappointingly stumbled in the fourth inning. This time, it was Nestor Cortes who was in cruise control, spinning six scoreless innings while retiring his first 16 batters. On the other side, it was Tyler Glasnow who ran into trouble, yielding three runs in the fourth to leave the Dodgers for dead.

Just like that, what was a two-game division lead for the Dodgers (73-57) at the start of this week, coming off their sweep of the Padres in Los Angeles last weekend, is a one-game advantage for San Diego in the National League West standings, with the Padres (74-56) primed to sweep the Dodgers right back.

A night after managing just one run and one hit off Yu Darvish on Friday (after he entered the game with an ERA close to 6.00), the Dodgers looked even more overmatched by the left-handed Cortes — who was out for redemption after giving up Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam in the World Series while playing for the New York Yankees last season.

Since that fateful October night, Cortes has switched teams twice. In the offseason, he was dealt to the Milwaukee Brewers, where he made two early starts before suffering an elbow injury. At the deadline, he was one of seven players the Padres acquired to bolster their roster for the stretch run.

San Diego Padres starting pitcher Nestor Cortes delivers against the Dodgers in the third inning Saturday.

(Derrick Tuskan / Associated Press)

Cortes had offered minimal help in his first three Padres outings, giving up seven runs in 15 innings while averaging barely 90 mph with his fastball.

But on Saturday, he found a rhythm with his trademark cutter, throwing it more than any other pitch while recording at least one out with it in all six innings he pitched.

The Dodgers hardly threatened in the first, with Shohei Ohtani leading off with a strikeout and Mookie Betts rolling over a center-cut cutter to third base. In the second, Cortes won his rematch with Freeman; throwing a down-and-in fastball all so similar to the one that landed in the right-field pavilion of Dodger Stadium last year — only to turn and watch another deep drive die at the warning track, this time to straightaway center field at Petco Park.

From there, the outs kept coming.

In the sixth inning, Miguel Rojas finally broke up the no-no, adjusting to yet another cutter for a line-drive single to right.

But by then, Glasnow had already dug a hole too deep for the Dodgers’ slumping lineup to climb out of.

After retiring his first six batters, Glasnow started losing his command in the third. He issued a leadoff walk to Ramón Laureano, another to Fernando Tatis Jr., and only escaped the jam after a 10-pitch at-bat against Luis Arraez ended in a grounder.

In the fourth, the Padres wouldn’t come away empty-handed again.

Walks to Manny Machado (on four pitches to lead off the inning) and Xander Bogaerts (on a string of fastballs that missed the zone) were sandwiched around a single from Ryan O’Hearn. Then, with the bases loaded, Laureano lined a two-run single to right. Jake Cronenworth tacked on a sacrifice fly. And just like on Friday, the Dodgers stared down the deficit — and found no way to erase it.

Cortes stranded Rojas, with the inning ending on a fly out from Ohtani. After that, the Padres’ talent-rich bullpen kept things at an arm’s length, with a pinch-hit home run from Alex Freeland (his second in as many nights) representing the Dodgers’ only scoring for a second-straight night.

Dodgers starting pitcher Tyler Glasnow delivers against the Padres in the fifth inning Saturday.

(Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

To do some quick math so far this weekend…

The Padres’ two starters have combined for 12 innings, one run and two hits compared to the 12 innings and five runs the Dodgers’ rotation has allowed.

The Dodgers have totaled five hits, three walks and 14 strikeouts. The Padres have 10 hits, eight walks and only 10 Ks against Dodger pitching.

And, most critically, the Padres have two wins — putting them back alone in first place by one game, and on the verge of a sweep that (at least based on the pitching matchups) few would have seen coming.

DENVER — Edgardo Henriquez has a gift. He can throw a baseball faster than all but a few humans in history.

Yet he prefers to think of it as something he and God created together, not something that was just given to him.

“We’ve worked for that,” said Henriquez, who frequently uses the plural pronoun when talking about himself. “All the work, the effort, the physics. And God’s reward, most of all.”

Wherever the lightning in his right arm came from, he’s making good use of it. Of the 83 pitches he’s thrown this season entering Wednesday’s game, 28 have topped 101 miles per hour. The fastest hit 103.3 on the radar gun last Saturday, making it the hardest-thrown pitch by a Dodger since Statcast began tracking speed in 2015 and likely the fastest pitch in franchise history.

Henriquez, 23, shrugs and smiles at the numbers.

“Now we have to stay consistent,” he said in Spanish. “Even growing up in Venezuela, I always threw hard.”

What he didn’t do in Venezuela was pitch because when he signed as a 16-year-old in 2018, Henriquez was a catcher. The Dodgers moved him to the other side of the plate a year later, when they got him to their Dominican academy.

The process was not a smooth one. The right-hander allowed 22 runs in 30 innings in his first season then, after sitting out the summer of 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, he came to the U.S. a year later and went 2-3 with a 4.93 ERA in 13 games split between the Arizona Complex League and Single A Rancho Cucamonga.

The Dodgers projected him as a starter but after Henriquez missed the 2023 season to Tommy John surgery, he came back throwing gas and the team moved him to the bullpen. The results were spectacular, with Henriquez climbing four levels, from Low A Rancho Cucamonga to the majors, in six months to make his big-league debut in the final week of the regular season.

And he announced his presence with authority, topping 101 mph twice to earn the save in his third game.

Henriquez grew up in Cumaná, a historic beach city of about half a million people wedged between the Manzanares Rivers and Venezuela’s Caribbean coast, 250 miles east of Caracas. The oldest continuously-inhabited Spanish settlement in South America, it has been the birthplace and poets and presidents. But baseball players? Not so much.

Pitcher Armando Galarraga, who was robbed of a perfect game by an umpire’s call in 2010, is probably the best known of Cumaná’s big-leagues while Maracay, on the other end of the country, has produced more than two dozen players, among them all-stars Bobby Abreu, Miguel Cabrera and Elvis Andrus.

“Maracay, yes. They say that is the birthplace of baseball in Venezuela,” Henriquez said. “But the truth is it’s Cumaná.”

Henriquez took to the game at an early age, playing on local fields and sandlots. And because he was among the biggest of the neighborhood kids, he was put behind the plate. The Dodgers liked his size — he looks much bigger than the 6-foot-4 and 200 pounds he’s credited with on the roster — and arm so they offered him $80,000 to sign as an international free agent with the intention of making him a pitcher.

Before the elbow-reconstruction surgery, Henriquez touched 101 mph with this fastball but he came back throwing even harder, averaging 99 mph and reaching 104 in the minors last summer. That earned him a September promotion and a spot on the roster for the Dodgers’ first two postseason series.

He was also in line for a spot on the opening day roster this season before a metatarsal injury in his left foot landed him in a walking boot, sidelining him for most of spring training.

Neither the Dodgers nor Henriquez will talk about how the injury happened.

“I’d rather keep that to myself,” the pitcher said this week.

Yet that setback proved just another obstacle for Henriquez to overcome, and after striking out 36 batters in 23 2/3 innings for Triple A Oklahoma City, he was summoned back to the Dodgers a month ago.

In some ways, he was a different pitcher.

“He looks much more confident,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I think he was confident last year, but there was like a fake confidence, understandably. He knows his stuff plays here, so it’s good to see.”

His record-setting pitch came in his sixth of seven scoreless appearances when he struck out pinch-hitter Ryan O’Hearn out on a four-seam fastball in the seventh inning of a win over the San Diego Padres.

His parents, Edgar and Erika, where visiting from Venezuela and in the stands at Dodger Stadium for the pitch to O’Hearn, one that has generated a lot of attention on social media. As a result Roberts said pitching coach Mark Prior and bullpen coach Josh Bard are making sure Henriquez understands there’s more to pitching that just lighting up the radar gun.

As good as the four-seamer is, however, it may not be Henriquez’s best pitch. His cutter, which sits in the mid-90s, can be all but unhitable and he also has a devastating slider. He’ll need every bit of that repertoire to succeed in the majors, said Chris Forbes, the senior director of player development for the Colorado Rockies, because the number of hard-throwers is growing.

“If there isn’t deception, there isn’t ride, [hitters] can catch up if you don’t have something else that they can think about,” he said.

So far the hitters aren’t catching up: In seven innings this summer entering Wednesday, Henriquez has allowed just three hits and walked one while striking out four. Opponents are hitting .120 against him.

It’s been a rapid rise for Henriquez, who has gone from teenage catcher to big-league reliever, surviving a global pandemic, Tommy John surgery and a fractured bone in his foot to pitch for a World Series champion. But there’s still one goal left, albeit one he talks about only grudgingly.

On a team without set bullpen roles, Henriquez wants to be a closer, using his blazing fastball not just to demoralize hitters but to shut down games as well.

“Whatever God has in store for me. We’ll work wherever and keep going,” he said. “But yes, I’d like to be a closer.”

Lourdes Gurriel Jr. took his time.

The Arizona Diamondbacks designated hitter didn’t swing at the first two pitches he saw from San Diego Padres reliever Mason Miller — a fastball that registered at 102 miles per hour for a ball and an 89-mph slider — with two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning Tuesday night in Phoenix.

The Cuban-American batter then fouled off the next four pitches, three of which were fastballs thrown between 101 and 104 mph. Miller’s seventh pitch of the at-bat was another scorcher, but Gurriel made contact and this time kept the ball in fair territory.

It traveled 439 feet and landed in the left-field stands for a two-run home run. Miller’s pitch was clocked at 103.9 mph, making it the fastest pitch to be hit for a home run since MLB started pitch tracking in 2008.

“It’s something that just happened,” Gurriel said after the game through an interpreter.

Miller said of the pitch: “Location could have been better, for sure. Ultimately, the result is what it is. I’m not going to sit here and regret what pitch I threw. Just got it out over the plate, a little bit high.”

Gurriel’s blast, which left the park at 107.1 mph, tied the game at 5-5. Unfortunately for the Diamondbacks, they couldn’t keep up the momentum against their National League West rivals and eventually lost 10-5 in 11 innings.

“The real meaning was in the time of the game and what it meant to the team to tie the ballgame. That was the most important thing,” Gurriel said of his historic homer. “I mean, unfortunately, it didn’t turn into a win, but that was the most exciting thing.”

It was Gurriel’s second home run of the game — he also hit a two-run homer off Padres starter Yu Darvish in the first inning — and his 14th of the season. Before Tuesday, Gurriel had not hit a home run since July 1.

Gurriel is the ninth player known to hit a home run off a ball thrown at 102 mph or faster and only the second player to do so off a pitch thrown faster than 103 mph. In September, Ian Happ of the Chicago Cubs went yard off a 103.2-mph pitch.

That pitch also happened to be thrown by Miller, who was with the Athletics at the time before being acquired by the Padres at the trade deadline last week. In his second appearance for San Diego, Miller pitched one inning, giving up one hit and a walk with two strikeouts. One of his pitches was clocked at 104.2 mph, the fastest ever tracked for a Padres pitcher.

“It’s a weapon,” Miller said of his fastball after Tuesday’s game. “But you still need to put together an at-bat for the guy, and work with him, as far as his swings and his approach in there.”

Between now and October, the Dodgers will be evaluating their increasingly healthy pitching staff, trying to identify the best 13 arms for their World Series push.

And for now, they remain hopeful that rookie right-hander Roki Sasaki could be part of that mix; writing an unexpected end to what once seemed like a lost 2025 campaign.

After being one of the biggest stories of the Dodgers’ offseason this winter, Sasaki has become more of an afterthought in the eight months since.

Back in January, the Dodgers’ acquisition of the Japanese phenom felt like a coup. The 23-year-old right-hander was billed as a future star in the making. He came advertised with a 100-mph fastball, devastating splitter and seemingly limitless potential as an ace-caliber pitcher. Most of all, he was a bargain addition financially, requiring only a $6.5-million signing bonus (for six years of team control) after making a rare early career jump from Japan.

The reality, to this point, has been nowhere near the expectation.

At the start of the season, Sasaki made eight underwhelming starts — with wild command and declining fastball velocity contributing to a 4.72 ERA — before being sidelined by a shoulder impingement.

Since then, he has sat on the injured list and largely faded into the background. An important piece of the Dodgers’ long-term plans, sure. But a wild card, at best, to contribute to their World Series defense this fall.

Lately, however, the narrative has started to shift again.

Over the last month, Sasaki has finally started progressing in a throwing program, twice facing hitters in recent live batting practice sessions. He has another three-inning simulated game scheduled for Friday, after which he could go out on a minor-league rehab assignment.

And after his early-season struggles to locate pitches or reach triple-digit velocities, the Dodgers have been encouraged with the changes he has made to his delivery and pitch mix. In a bullpen session Tuesday, Sasaki hit 96 mph with his four-seam fastball while also showcasing a two-seamer he has added during his time injured.

“I’m expecting to see pounding of the strike zone, conviction behind the throws, and just a better performer,” manager Dave Roberts said of Sasaki, who could rejoin the active roster near the end of August.

“At the end of the day, I just think that Roki has got to believe that his stuff plays here, which we all believe it does.”

The team’s title chances, of course, don’t exactly hinge on Sasaki. If their current rotation stays healthy, they should have more than enough starting pitching depth to navigate another deep October run.

But getting Sasaki back would provide some welcome pitching insurance.

He could also be a candidate to eventually shift to the bullpen, with Roberts leaving open the possibility of using him as a hard-throwing reliever come the end of the season (even though they intend to stretch him out to six innings as starter for now).

“We’re gonna take the 13 best pitchers [into the playoffs],” Roberts said. “If Roki is a part of that in some capacity, then that would be great. And if he’s not, then he won’t be.”

For much of the summer, it seemed like a long shot the Dodgers would be having such conversations about Sasaki at this point.

For all the hype that accompanied his arrival, the results made him look like more a long-term project.

In his eight early-season starts, his fastball averaged only 96 mph, and was punished by opposing hitters for its flat, relatively easy-to-hit shape. His slider was a work-in-progress, leaving him without a reliable third pitch.

His go-to splitter did induce the occasional awkward swing from opponents, and garnered much praise from teammates. But Sasaki failed to consistently use it to generate chase out of the strike zone.

As a result, he pitched from behind in the count too often (evidenced by his 24-to-22 strikeout-to-walk ratio). He seemingly lacked confidence to attack opposing hitters over the plate (and gave up six home runs in just 34 ⅓ innings when he did). And once he went down with his shoulder injury (which was similar to one that had bothered him during his Japanese career), the early stages of his rehab did not go smoothly, with Sasaki requiring a pain-relieving injection in June almost two months after initially going on the IL.

Since then, though, Sasaki has finally turned a corner.

He told reporters Tuesday that he now has “no pain” and is feeling “better about being able to throw harder” upon his return.

He has used his recent ramp-up as an opportunity to reset his mechanics, and clean up an arm path that Dodgers personnel believed was affected by his shoulder problems at the start of the season.

“What we saw early on is probably not indicative of what everybody expects and has seen from him in the past when he’s been 100%,” pitching coach Mark Prior said.

While out injured, Sasaki has also had an opportunity to sit back and watch big-league games up close, something Roberts and Prior insisted would be beneficial for a young pitcher who came to the majors with only 394 career innings over four seasons in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league.

“He’s down there in that [dugout] stairwell when we’re at home pretty much all nine innings,” Prior said. “You can’t not learn by just watching and at least having some experience … I think he understands now the importance of, ‘I’ve got to be ahead. I’ve got to attack the strike zone.’ He doesn’t necessarily need it to be executed precisely, but it’s got to be in the strike zone. You can’t be living behind in counts.”

There may be no bigger sign of growth than Sasaki’s embrace of the two-seam fastball.

Before he got hurt, it was a pitch that people within the organization thought could help keep hitters off his diminished four-seam heater. Prior said that, before Sasaki was shut down, the coaching staff had initiated a conversation about adding it to his repotoire.

“Clearly, everybody would love a fast, high-riding four-seam,” Prior said. “But even that being said, these [hitters] have gotten a lot better and know how to attack those things. So just giving them different looks and stuff to lean into and keeping the righties honest, just gives him some flexibilities and some options.”

The hope is that it will help Sasaki be more competitive when he returns, and complement the rest of his highly-touted arsenal.

That, when coupled with improved health and refined mechanics, will trigger a late-season resurgence capable of making him an option for the postseason roster.

“My every intention is to get back on the major league mound and pitch again,” Sasaki said through interpreter Will Ireton. “With that being said, I do need to fight for the opportunity too. I don’t think that I’ll just be given the opportunity right away.”

MILWAUKEE — Yoshinobu Yamamoto was one pitch away from a clean first inning Monday night.

Instead, it devolved into a sudden, unstoppable nightmare.

In the shortest start of his MLB career, and in an outing that somehow rivaled his disastrous debut in the majors last March in South Korea, Yamamoto missed one chance after the next to escape the bottom of the first against the Milwaukee Brewers at American Family Field. Poor defense and bad batted-ball luck didn’t help in what became a 41-pitch collapse.

By the time it was all over, the Brewers were leading by five runs, manager Dave Roberts was summoning a reliever just two outs into the game, and the Dodgers were well on their way to a fourth consecutive defeat, never coming close to a comeback in a 9-1 loss to open a six-game road trip.

The trouble started quickly beneath an open retractable roof on a mild summer night in Wisconsin.

Sal Frelick hammered a hanging curveball for a leadoff double. Willson Contreras drew a walk when Yamamoto couldn’t locate his splitter near the zone. And the two outs that followed — a fly ball from Jackson Chourio and grounder from Christian Yelich — proved to be only a temporary reprieve.

In the next at-bat, newly acquired Brewers slugger Andrew Vaughn came to the plate in his first game with the team. He got three straight sliders from Yamamoto to start, fanning on the first before laying off two that missed the zone next. Then, after a called strike on a fastball at the knees evened the count 2-and-2, catcher Will Smith dialed up another curveball from Yamamoto again.

It was supposed to be down and on the outside corner. Instead, it fluttered up and above the zone. Vaughn connected with a mighty upper-cut swing. The ball soared beyond the left-field wall, making it 3-0 Brewers just like that.

Somehow, the inning would only get worse from there.

Despite entering the night coming off a first-career All-Star selection, and leading the majors in road ERA at 1.57, Yamamoto failed to settle down.

In a 1-and-2 count against Isaac Collins, he left a fastball down the middle that was hammered for a single. After falling behind 3-and-0 to Brice Turang, Yamamoto worked the count full only to miss badly with a fastball and issue an inning-extending walk.

With his pitch count climbing at that point, Roberts began to stir the bullpen.

Yamamoto appeared to finally find an escape route against Caleb Durbin, inducing a grounder with a splitter that was hit straight to shortstop Mookie Betts. But, in a rare defensive lapse at his new position, Betts spiked a throw to first that Freddie Freeman couldn’t corral. Collins came racing around from second to score. The inning stayed alive when it once again should’ve ended.

Yamamoto’s leash finally ran out on pitch 41, when Andruw Monasterio lobbed a bloop RBI single down the right-field line in the next at-bat. As another run scored, Roberts came walking out of the bullpen to give the team’s season-long ace an unimaginably early hook.

The two teams played the final eight innings. But the result already seemed well in hand.

The Dodgers’ lineup was shorthanded, missing Teoscar Hernández with a bruised foot and Tommy Edman with a pinky toe fracture (both are expected back in the lineup by Wednesday). Before the game, Kiké Hernández was also put on the injured list with an elbow injury that had been bothering him since he made an awkward slide in Cleveland in late May, and flared up to the point of requiring a cortisone shot this past weekend. Not to be forgotten, Max Muncy also remains sidelined by his bum knee.

In their places, the Dodgers started James Outman in center field (who was called up from triple A pregame), Miguel Rojas at third base and Hyeseong Kim at second against Brewers All-Star right-hander Freddy Peralta.

The outcome was predictable: Six innings of shutout ball in which the Dodgers managed only five hits, one walk and struck out seven times.

The transformation happened quickly in May 2009.

Early into his second year in the majors, a young Clayton Kershaw was enduring a sophomore slump with the Dodgers. Looking for a way to complement his predominantly fastball/curveball mix, he began toying around with a slider in his between-starts bullpen sessions.

When Brad Ausmus, the well-traveled 40-year-old backup catcher on that year’s Dodgers team, heard about the experiment, he didn’t initially think much of it. That a raw 21-year-old talent would be tinkering with a new pitch didn’t come as much of a surprise.

But when Ausmus asked the club’s bullpen catcher, Mike Borzello, how Kershaw’s new pitch looked, he got his first inkling it might be special.

“He was like, ‘It’s really good,’” Ausmus recalled recently. “I said, ‘Oh, so maybe he’ll throw it in a couple more bullpens before taking it into the game.’ And he’s like, ‘Ehh, I think he might take it into the game his next start.’”

A few weeks later, Ausmus got his first chance to see it up close, calling it sporadically in a Freeway Series game at Angel Stadium. That day, Kershaw spun a gem, throwing seven scoreless innings in a Dodgers victory.

But it was afterward, as Kershaw, Ausmus and longtime Dodgers pitching coach Rick Honeycutt reviewed the outing, that the longtime catcher started to understand that Kershaw wasn’t just any young pitcher. That his tantalizing talent was matched by a preternatural aptitude. That his precocious battery mate was both a physical force and pitching prodigy.

Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw, left, talks with former teammate Brad Ausmus, right, and coach Matt Martin before a game in 2019, when Ausmus was the manager of the Angels.

(Alex Gallardo/AP)

“Keep in mind, this is a rookie, basically, talking to a guy who’s been in the big leagues 17, 18 years,” Ausmus said. “And he goes, ‘Brad, I wish you would call more sliders.’”

Initially surprised, Ausmus thought to himself: “Really? This is a brand new pitch. We probably threw 10 or 15 of them.”

But Kershaw could already see the bigger picture. He immediately sensed how the new pitch might profoundly influence his game.

“If you think about it, the fastball was 95, the curveball was probably in the low-to-mid 80s, so there was a lot of separation in terms of velocity. It almost gave the hitter time to reload before swinging,” Ausmus said. “The slider did not allow the hitters to do that.”

Seventeen years, three Cy Young Awards, two World Series titles, and — very nearly — 3,000 strikeouts later, the rest has been singularly impressive history.

“It speaks to not only his knowledge, but his ability and his confidence,” said Ausmus, now bench coach for the New York Yankees. “He has an aptitude for the game. He adjusts. And he continues to perform at a high level. It really is remarkable … I miss having that guy as a teammate.”

When Clayton Kershaw takes the mound on Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium, he will need just three strikeouts to become the 20th member of Major League Baseball’s 3,000 strikeout club.

And, just as it was almost two decades ago, it will be the same primary three-pitch mix that is all but certain to lift him into such rarified air.

For better or (very rarely) worse, at full strength or in ailing health, the now 37-year-old future Hall of Famer has managed to perfect one of the sport’s all-time signature plans of attack on the mound:

Establish the fastball on the edge of the plate for a strike. Tunnel the slider on the same trajectory to get awkward swings when it tails off late. Mix in a curveball when a change of pace is needed. And never be afraid to change the sequence and tendencies of that infallible trio of pitches, using instinct and feel to amplify his physical talent.

“It’s what’s upstairs [that makes him special],” current Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior said. “He’s always a step ahead.”

Countless big-league pitchers have used a similar fastball-slider-curveball repertoire. Even in Kershaw’s prime years, there were always others who could throw harder, or produce more break, or manipulate the ball with more gravity-defying spin.

What separates Kershaw are more foundational skills. His unwavering execution, in seasons he threw 200-plus innings or those in which he battled increasingly persistent injuries to his back, shoulder and even a bothersome left big toe. His unflappable persistence to move from one pitch, one start, one year to the next; never satisfied with his best moments nor shaken by his rare failures.

“He just knows the ins and outs of baseball, and has such good feel,” longtime teammate and backstop Austin Barnes said. “He’s like a train that comes at you consistently.”

That’s why, when Kershaw does inevitably cross the 3,000-strikeout threshold, it will be equal parts a testament to his talent and durability — an accomplishment that required him to continually reinvent his game without ever changing his fundamental nature as a pitcher.

“Clayton has everything the right way, on the field, off the field, over a long period of time,” manager Dave Roberts said last week.

“It’s hard to wrap your head around what it takes,” he added, “as far as longevity, and greatness.”

“He’s like a train that comes at you consistently,” former Dodgers catcher Austin Barnes, center, said of pitcher Clayton Kershaw, left.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Few players have produced the kind of prolonged period of greatness Kershaw did during the peak of his career. Starting in that 2009 season, he went on a run of sub-3.00 ERA campaigns in 11 of his next 12 years. In seven of them, he had 200 or more strikeouts, including a career-high 301 punchouts in 2015. Eight of his 10 All-Star selections came in that stretch, as did his three Cy Young Awards and a 2014 National League MVP (still the last time a pitcher won the game’s highest individual honor).

His only blemishes in that time were repeated disappointments in the playoffs. But even in most of those, he was tasked with trying to save the team’s season while pitching on short rest or desperately-needed outings out of the bullpen.

“Even with all the pressure he’s had as the Dodgers’ ace … he’s always out there, he’s always willing to take the ball,” Barnes said. “I think that goes underappreciated. He’s willing to put himself out there, even when he doesn’t feel his best.”

To Barnes, who has caught more Kershaw starts than anyone other than A.J. Ellis, the way Kershaw strives to always be better is what has made it all possible. It was a trait he noticed in one of his first games catching him in 2017 against the San Diego Padres.

“I kind of went against the scouting report, and I called a fastball that froze the guy,” Barnes, who signed a minor-league deal with the San Francisco Giants this week after being released by the Dodgers earlier this year, recalled recently. “I remember him coming up to me after, kind of sizing me up and down, like, ‘Why’d you call that?’ I just said, ‘I just kind of felt it.’”

It was a small example of how Kershaw’s pitch mix — unchanged over the years, outside of an occasional flirtation with a variety of changeup grips — could be weaponized in ways opposing batters have long struggled to expect.

“Not everybody gets to his caliber of pitching and stuff,” Barnes said. “But the work he puts in, in the weight room, in the video room, for him to go out there and have clarity and conviction in what he needs to do, I think that’s what helps most. And the level of competitor he is. He can do it all.”

Even, in recent years, as his stuff has gradually diminished.

At the start of this season, Kershaw was just 32 strikeouts away from the 3K club — an exclusive fraternity that includes only three other left-handed pitchers, and two who spent their entire career with one team.

In past seasons, that would’ve been a total he could clear in less than a month.

But now, he joked early in his return from offseason foot and knee surgeries: “Maybe by September I’ll get there. We’ll see.”

After all, Kershaw barely touches 90 mph with his fastball even on a good day now. His slider and curveball don’t always have as much bite as they once did. Such has been the case for much of the last three seasons, as the miles on Kershaw’s arm and body have steadily caught up to him.

At the end of 2020, when Kershaw finally won his first World Series and began more seriously starting to contemplate when he might retire, he was less than 500 strikeouts away from 3,000. He seemed like a virtual lock to get there, perhaps as the last new entrant for the foreseeable future.

“He’s always a step ahead,” Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior, left, said recently about pitcher Clayton Kershaw when discussing the key to his success.

(Ross D. Franklin / Associated Press)

Since then, however, he had a season-ending elbow injury in 2021 that nearly required Tommy John surgery; back and shoulder problems that limited him in what were nonetheless All-Star seasons in 2022 and 2023; consecutive offseasons of surgical rehabs each of the past two winters, first on his shoulder and then his lower-body ailments; all on top of the normal aches and pains that come with pitching into someone’s late 30s.

His three-pitch arsenal remains unchanged, but figuring out ways to maximize it has been an ongoing challenge.

“He’s doing it the same way, but he’s having to figure out different ways to do it, if that makes sense,” Prior said.

Just like when he first broke into the majors, it has required him to trust what’s working best and adjust on the fly to his ever-weakening capabilities.

And yet, entering Wednesday’s potential milestone outing, Kershaw is 4-0 with a 3.03 ERA in his eight starts this season (the second-best ERA among Dodgers starters behind only Yoshinobu Yamamoto). He is coming off a particularly productive June, giving up just seven earned runs in 27 ⅔ innings. And, while they don’t come as frequently as they once did, the strikeouts are still present, with Kershaw averaging 7 ½ per nine innings over his last five starts.

To Prior, it’s a testament to Kershaw’s enduring ability to still pitch his way through a start.

“He knows when guys are looking hard and he can get them with the slider. The fastball and slider still do look the same, when he’s on, so he can pull the trigger on one or the other … And he has the equalizer with the curveball, to be able to use that to change speeds like he has his whole career.”

“Again, it’s the same pitch mix,” Prior added, “but he’s still finding ways to do it at this stage.”

To Roberts, it’s made Kershaw an example for the rest of the team to follow.

“It’s a lesson in life,” the manager said. “You don’t always have to feel perfect to be productive. I have a lot of respect for him.”

The great irony, once Kershaw does eclipse the 3,000-strikeout mark, is that punchouts have never been his primary objective.

“No, no,” Barnes said with a laugh. “He cares about winning the game and throwing up zeroes. That’s the biggest thing for him. The strikeouts are just a byproduct of him getting ahead of hitters, and being able to have [the pitches in] his mix playing off each other.”

But once that moment does arrive — fittingly, as things have lined up, likely on the Dodger Stadium mound he has dominated for almost two decades — the total will be indicative of all he has accomplished in a career of unmatched excellence, and the way he has elevated himself as one of the best pitchers in the history of the sport.

“He’s teaching me that so much of this game is still about mindset,” Prior said. “There’s so much object data, which is helpful in all aspects of our game. But part of it is still so unquantifiable. He’s just someone who has willed himself to be better than everybody else.”

With his arm forming a 90-degree angle at his elbow, Shohei Ohtani clenched his right hand like an umpire signaling an out.

The actual home-plate umpire, Tripp Gibson, didn’t make the same gesture.

Fernando Tatis Jr. was ruled safe at home. Three batters into his first game pitching for the Dodgers, Ohtani was charged with a run.

Ohtani pointed his glove at Gibson. He screamed. He turned his head in the direction of the Dodgers dugout, waving his glove as if to urge the bench to challenge the call.

The Dodgers saw another side of Ohtani on Monday in their 6-3 victory over the San Diego Padres, but that entailed more than him taking the mound and throwing a couple of 100-mph fastballs.

Ohtani the pitcher, they learned, isn’t as playful as Ohtani the hitter. He snarls. He barks. He’s emotional, even downright combative at times.

This temperament could explain why Ohtani pitched the way he did in his first game in two seasons — why he threw as hard as he did, why he couldn’t control his fastball, why his sweeper lacked its usual movement.

Hitting is what Ohtani does for fun. Pitching is what he treats as work, and Ohtani was amped up to return to the mound.

“I was more nervous than when I’m just a hitter,” Ohtani said in Japanese.

His performance reflected that. In the one inning he pitched as an opener, he was charged with a run and two hits. He threw 28 pitches, of which only 16 were strikes.

Shohei Ohtani takes the mound for the Dodgers for the first time since signing with the team.

“My arm was moving a little too fast, so pitches were going more to the glove side than I anticipated,” Ohtani said.

His first pitch was a 97.6-mph fastball that was fouled off by Tatis. He averaged 99.1 mph with his four-seam fastball and 97.4 mph with his sinker, throwing 13 pitches at 98 mph or faster. He was clocked at 100.2 mph against Luis Arraez and 99.9 against Manny Machado.

That was considerably faster than Ohtani threw in live batting practice and considerably faster than the Dodgers were expecting him to throw in this game.

“I wanted to be around 95-96 as much as possible,” Ohtani said.

Ohtani gave up a single to Tatis on a 99.1-mph fastball that was left over the heart of the plate. Tatis advanced to second base on a 98.3-mph wild pitch and third on a single that Arraiz hit off a 98-mph sinker.

With runners on the corners, Ohtani thought he struck out Machado on a sweeper, but he was ruled to have checked his swing. Ohtani pointed at Gibson and appealed for a strike but to no avail. Ohtani unironically made a Joe Kelly pouty face.

Two pitches later, Machado scored Tatis with a sacrifice fly to center field.

“A little more animated than he usually is,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of Ohtani.

Roberts already knew Ohtani would be like this, as he’d spoken to people familiar with Ohtani, including former Angels manager Phil Nevin.

“I guess as a pitcher, he shows a lot more emotion and gets frustrated when things don’t go well or he doesn’t do what he’s supposed to do on the mound,” Roberts said with a chuckle.

Ohtani was more in control when he retired Xander Bogaerts for the final out of the inning, and he pointed to the at-bat as a highlight.

“I was able to relax and pitch,” he said.

Ohtani started by attacking him with a sweeper that was called for a strike. He followed that up with a 95.6-mph sinker that missed low, but forced Bogaerts to ground out for the third out on another sinker, this one on the inside half of the plate. That pitch was 95.4 mph.

After that, Ohtani strapped on protective gear and slipped on batting gloves while standing on the railing in front of the Dodgers’ bench. As a hitter, he finished the game two for four with a walk, two runs scored and two runs batted in.

In the batter’s box and on the basepaths, his demeanor softened. By the time he reached third base in the Dodgers’ five-run fourth inning, he was sharing laughs with Machado.

On the field, he’s produced the first 50-50 season in baseball history and won a World Series. Off it, he’s sold everything from unsweetened green tea to skin-care products.

As it was, it felt as if Shohei Ohtani was everywhere. In reality, this was just half of the package.

The Dodgers are finally about to have the complete version of Ohtani, the right-handed pitcher with a 100-mph fastball who also launches 470-foot homers as a left-handed hitter.

Two-Way Shohei is back.

Ohtani will pitch his first game for the Dodgers on Monday, the team naming him as its starter for the opening game of a four-game series against the San Diego Padres at Dodger Stadium.

What was already a one-of-a-kind show will evolve into something that might never be seen again after Ohtani retires — not at Dodger Stadium, not at any other major league stadium, not anywhere in the world.

The news of Ohtani’s mound return became a source of anticipation in the Dodgers’ clubhouse, with Clayton Kershaw describing himself as “super excited.”

“I think we all are,” Kershaw said. “I think as fans of the game and just seeing him day in and day out get ready to pitch and do both, it’s going to be really fun, whether it’s one inning or whatever it is.”

The Dodgers plan to deploy Ohtani for an inning or two as an opener.

For most of this season, the Dodgers operated under the assumption that Ohtani wouldn’t pitch until after the All-Star break. The change of plans doesn’t represent a speeding up of a timeline as much as it does a modification of the route that will be taken to a final destination.

Ohtani last pitched in 2023 when he was still playing for the Angels, and he didn’t pitch in his first season for the Dodgers last year as he recovered from his second Tommy John surgery.

Shohei Ohtani pitches in the bullpen at Dodger Stadium on June 4.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

In recent weeks, he prepared for his mound return by pitching to hitters in live batting practice. He threw 44 pitches in three innings in his third and most recent session.

However, throwing live batting practice and taking four or five at-bats in an actual game as a designated hitter was like “playing a doubleheader for him,” Roberts said.

To eliminate the exhausting cycle of warming up to throw, cooling down after, and warming up again to play a game, the Dodgers figured they could build up Ohtani’s arm in games. Whatever modest Ohtani’s contributions can make from the mound, the Dodgers will take them. With multiple starters on the injured list, the bullpen has shouldered a disproportionate share of the pitching load.

Because Ohtani wouldn’t take up an extra roster spot, Kershaw pointed out, “We don’t have to lose a pitcher or anything, so if he throws an inning a week, it’s great.”

Ohtani will likely pitch about once a week, with every start expected to be about an inning longer than the previous one. Theoretically, he could pitch four times before the All-Star break, which would stretch him out to be ready to pitch five innings when the Dodgers resume play.

While Ohtani remains in a ramp-up phase and his fastball has sat in the 94-95 mph range in his live bullpen sessions, still not at the 98-99 mph he once averaged. However, team officials believe he is ready to compete at the major league level because of the movement of his pitches.

Ohtani evidently thinks so as well.

“I think I’m approaching a level that is sufficient to pitch in games,” Ohtani said in Japanese on Saturday night.

His 25 homers are the most in the National League. He is also batting .297 with 41 runs batted in. The Dodgers’ leadoff hitter, he’s also stolen 11 bases.

Ohtani said didn’t think his offensive production would be diminished by pitching.

“I played as just a DH last year,” he said, “but to do both at the same time is my usual style.”

Ohtani played six seasons with the Angels, and he was a two-way player in four of them. His last three seasons with them made up what was arguably the greatest three-year stretch in the history of the sport, as he won two MVP awards and would have won a third if not for a 62-home season by Aaron Judge.

He has an opportunity now to match, or even surpass, that. Only this time, he will do so on a team that has a chance to reward him for his unprecedented achievements with the postseason glory he craves.

Three times in the ninth inning last Friday night in New York, new Dodgers closer Tanner Scott made the same simplistic, save-blowing mistake.

In an inning that saw Scott blow a three-run Dodgers lead — forcing the team into a 13-inning marathon that, despite eventually winning, their overworked bullpen could ill-afford — Scott got to two strikes against a Mets batter, only to leave a mistake pitch over the plate.

To Starling Marte, it was a 1-and-2 fastball up and over the middle, resulting in a leadoff single.

After a one-out walk to Pete Alonso, Scott had Jeff McNeil 2-and-2 before throwing a belt-high heater on the inner half that was ripped for a two-run triple.

Another two-strike count followed to Tyrone Taylor, but Scott’s 1-and-2 slider hung up around the heart of zone, leading to a tying single that marked Scott’s fourth blown save in 14 opportunities this year and raised his ERA to 3.42 — hardly the numbers expected out of an All-Star left-hander signed to a $72-million contract this offseason.

“I think the stuff is still good,” manager Dave Roberts said afterward. “It’s just right now, it just seems like when there is a mistake, they find some outfield grass or put a good swing on it.”

And lately, such mistakes have been coming in more abundance than usual for Scott, highlighting one early-season trend the Dodgers are now working to address.

“Right now, he’s just kind of living in the middle, the midline of the zone,” pitching coach Mark Prior said. “You leave it in that spot, more than likely they’re gonna put a good swing on it.”

Dodgers pitcher Tanner Scott embraces catcher Dalton Rushing after a 3-1 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks at Dodger Stadium on May 21.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

For a pitcher who struggled with command issues early in his career — before blossoming into one of the top left-handed relievers in the sport of the last several seasons — Scott is now seemingly suffering from the opposite problem.

So far this year, more than 58% of his pitches have been in the strike zone, a rate that is easily a personal career high (well up from his previous high mark of 52.4% last year) and ranks 18th among qualified big-league relievers.

On top of that, hitters have been on such offerings as well, making contact on 80% of swings against Scott’s pitches over the plate (compared to his 76% career rate) and averaging almost 92 mph of exit velocity on balls put in play (leaving Scott in the seventh percentile of MLB arms when it comes to batted ball contact).

The good news is that Scott has 25 strikeouts and only two walks. Even with his fastball playing a tick down velocity-wise (averaging 96.1 mph this year compared to 97 mph last year), he converted nine of his first 11 save opportunities, squandering only a pair of one-run leads while posting a sub-2.00 ERA through his first 21 appearances.

This past week, however, Scott was knocked around twice: Giving up three runs on two homers to the Arizona Diamondbacks last week (in another game that necessitated extra innings before the Dodgers came back to win) before his ninth-inning meltdown at Citi Field on Sunday.

“He’s actually been pretty good for us,” Roberts said of Scott’s performance overall. “But the last couple, the last two of three, he’s obviously given up leads.”

Scott said his increased aggressiveness in the strike zone has not been by design.

“I don’t even look at it,” he bristled when asked about his rise in in-zone pitch percentage this weekend. “I don’t even look at it.”

But Prior acknowledged it is something on the coaching staff’s radar.

“Obviously, we want strikes; more strikes than balls,” Prior said. “But he gets in situations where he can get into counts, and I think we’re just leaving too many balls in the zone late in counts, instead of going for more miss.”

Friday’s blown save being Exhibit A.

“I’m not putting [guys] away,” acknowledged Scott, whose whiff rate has also dropped to 26.6% this season compared to his 34.7% career average. “I’m not getting the swing-and-miss, and I’m keeping the ball in the zone too much.”

To Prior, it’s even OK if Scott starts “to walk a few more guys,” he said, “[if] in turn he can get more chase out of the zone when you have leverage.”

“He’s still a really good pitcher,” Prior added. “So we’re going to bank on him.”

Dodgers pitcher Tanner Scott throws from the mound against the Arizona Diamondbacks on May 20 at Dodger Stadium.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Right now, the Dodgers don’t have much of a choice.

Fellow high-leverage relievers Evan Phillips (forearm discomfort), Blake Treinen (forearm sprain), Kirby Yates (hamstring strain) and Michael Kopech (shoulder impingement) are all out injured. And while Kopech is on a minor-league rehab assignment, and Yates and Treinen are both beginning throwing programs, Phillips’ absence is starting to become “concerning,” Roberts acknowledged this weekend, with the team’s former ninth-inning fixture now going on three weeks without throwing because of an injury initially expected to keep him out for only the minimum 15 days.

“I’m getting a little kind of concerned,” Roberts said of Phillips, “but hoping for the best.”

It all makes Scott’s performance in save opportunities particularly crucial for the Dodgers right now.

Given the team’s MLB-high bullpen workload this year, Roberts has been forced to be selective when it comes to the usage of the few high-leverage relievers still at his disposal. Having Scott blow games in which the team has already burned its best other relief bullets, and could potentially face the added burden of resulting extra innings, are all taxing side effects the Dodgers are not currently equipped to handle.

“To be quite fair,” Roberts noted of Scott, whose 23 ⅔ innings are only fourth-most in the bullpen, “the other guys have been used a lot more than he has.”

Thus, while Scott might only require simple adjustments, such as better locating his fastball up and out of the zone and more consistently executing his slider in locations that induce more chase, enacting such changes quickly is paramount.

After all, the Dodgers made him one of the highest-paid relievers in baseball this offseason to stabilize their bullpen. And lately, he’s instead been one more source of unneeded flux.

In the Tokyo Dome in March, you could almost hear the zip of the ball.

101 mph.

The pop of the catcher’s mitt sounded like a gunshot.

100 mph.

Roki Sasaki would lift his left leg almost to his head, stretch far down the front side of the mound, and let out a grunt as a blur of white leather came screaming from his hand.

100 mph.

For a brief moment, at the very start of his Major League Baseball career, it seemed like the Japanese phenom pitching prospect had already achieved one of his most important rookie objectives.

100 mph.

During his MLB debut in Japan, Sasaki hit those 100-plus-mph velocities on each of his first four big-league pitches. In the first inning of that March 19 game against the Chicago Cubs, he eclipsed 99 mph eight times in a 1-2-3 frame.

For a developing young pitcher who came to the majors this offseason fixated on improving his fastball speeds, it was a promising early sign — an apparent indication that, after suffering a slight drop in fastball velo during his last season in Japan, the 6-foot-4 flamethrower still possessed triple-digit life.

“The velocity,” manager Dave Roberts said that day, “was good.”

Roki Sasaki’s first four pitches of his MLB debut against the Chicago Cubs at the Tokyo Dome in March were at least 100 mph. He has not reached that velocity since.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Almost two months later, however, in one of the more confounding developments of the Dodgers’ otherwise successful start to the season, Sasaki hasn’t come close to even flirting with 100 mph again.

Instead, over a choppy seven-game sample following the team’s return from Japan, Sasaki has struggled to consistently throw the ball hard, averaging just 96 mph with his four-seamer on the whole this season while sometimes dropping down to the 92-93 mph range.

“It’s not an ideal situation,” pitching coach Mark Prior said. “Clearly, the fastball is not gonna carry through the zone at 93 very effectively.”

For some pitchers, this wouldn’t be as pressing a problem. Even in an era of rising fastball velocities around the sport, sitting in the mid-90s is still safely above the major-league average.

Sasaki, however, needs premium velocity (plus consistent command) to make his heater competitive. Because, for all his other raw natural talent, there isn’t much natural deception to the pitch.

Unlike the best fastballs in the sport, Sasaki doesn’t throw his four-seamer with much spin or “vertical break” (pitch characteristics that can give fastballs a rising illusion as they barrel toward the plate). While others can miss bats at even below-average pitch speeds, Sasaki’s four-seamer has a flatter shape that’s easier to hit.

As a result, his fastball has always been predicated on eye-popping velocity — requiring elite radar-gun readings to blow opponents away.

“The velocity allows for that margin of error,” Prior said last week. “And clearly, that’s not there [right now].”

In evaluating Sasaki’s underwhelming start to the season — he has a 4.72 ERA and 1.485 WHIP in his first eight starts, logging just 34 ⅓ innings with only 24 strikeouts and a whopping 22 walks — the most glaring red flag has been the performance of his fastball.

So far, his trademark splitter has been an effective weapon, yielding just a .158 batting average to opponents while generating whiffs on 35% of swings. His lesser-used slider has been a fine secondary option, with opponents batting just three-for-12 against it while coming up empty on 33% of swings.

Sasaki’s fastball, on the other hand, has been susceptible to the improved level of hitting he has faced in the big leagues, resulting in a .253 opponent batting average, a .494 slugging percentage, almost as many home runs allowed (six, not even including two others that were robbed on leaping catches by Andy Pages) as strikeouts generated (eight), and a 10.1% whiff rate that ranks fifth-lowest for four-seamers among qualified MLB starters.

Granted, Sasaki’s lack of command has factored into such struggles, leaving him all too often in unfavorable hitter’s counts where opponents are better primed to square up mistakes.

“I think guys are on his fastball because it’s the one thing that’s probably in the zone more than anything,” Prior said. “This goes back to his ability to throw the other pitches for strikes, and be able to mix, probably balance with all three.”

Still, since that adrenaline-fueled debut in his home country, Sasaki hasn’t thrown even one fastball that has topped 99 mph. In that same span, he has chucked 27 that failed to eclipse 94 mph. Each week, his declining fastball velocity has become a bigger conversation point around his outings. But so far, few answers have materialized about how he can fix it.

“Just really still in this process of finding out what the root cause [is],” Sasaki said through interpreter Will Ireton this past weekend, after the Arizona Diamondbacks teed off on a heater that averaged 94.9 mph in a four-inning, five-run start that represented his worst outing of the year.

“[I’m] working with my coaches, talking to people about this,” Sasaki added. “I’m not quite exactly sure and can’t really state exactly the single reason.”

The Dodgers’ coaching staff has faced the same conundrum this year, struggling to identify exactly why an element so critical to Sasaki’s success — fastball velocity was such a point of emphasis during Sasaki’s free agency this winter, he gave interested clubs a “homework assignment” about how they planned to improve it — has been so far from advertised during the start of his rookie season.

Prior acknowledged that there are “clearly some delivery things” that Sasaki is “still trying to work through” right now. After struggling with wild command in his first few appearances, Sasaki and the team also discussed whether slightly dialing back on the intensity of his throws could help him more consistently locate pitches over the plate.

Mechanics alone, however, don’t explain why Sasaki’s fastball has dropped into the low 90s for some stretches of the year, Prior countered.

And though Sasaki’s command has somewhat improved while throwing with less velocity, both he and Prior insisted his velo hasn’t dropped this far on purpose.

“For us, it’s always been like, ‘If it’s 100 or if it’s 98, that’s fine, if it’s easier to control or something like that.’ We had that conversation,” Prior said. “But nothing to the degree of where it’s been.”

Given that Sasaki has shown no signs of any physical ailment, it’s possible he could be experiencing more of a pitch conviction issue in his new MLB surroundings, potentially lacking the internal confidence to let his fastball consistently rip at top speeds.

“We go back to the drawing board every week with him. We try to talk to him about some certain things, some ideas,” Prior said. “But ultimately, he’s working through his process, and we’re just trying to support him with everything we can.”

To this point, that process has not involved the addition of a different fastball variety more apt at generating soft contact, such as a two-seamer or cutter. Sasaki has said repeatedly that his primary goal is to first refine his primary fastball-splitter arsenal.

“There’s been a lot of conversations about a lot of different things,” Prior said. “Again, we go every week with him, and we’ve been trying to shed light on things where we think there’s gonna be some improvement. But ultimately, again, I think it’s just him trying to get his footing under him, and be comfortable in what he’s doing.”

Indeed, the Dodgers continue to argue that this is all part of Sasaki’s long-term development arc — inevitable growing pains for a superstar who, despite all the hoopla that surrounded his signing, arrived in the majors as an admitted work in progress.

“He’s certainly talented,” Roberts said. “But there’s finishing school. That’s something that we were prepared for. I know it’s harder for him to embrace not having complete success, but this is a tough league.”

When Sasaki’s fastball has ticked up, he’s gotten results, too. On heaters thrown at 97 mph or above, opponents are batting just .133 with a .333 slugging percentage, and swinging-and-missing almost twice as often.

“He will make adjustments given how the hitters respond,” Roberts said. “I think you learn that by doing that here.”

But until that happens, and Sasaki’s fastball starts returning to the upper 90s or 100-mph levels he flashed in Japan, more struggles could lie ahead. More growing pains might have to be endured.