Truly Adams of Moreno Valley is racing Formula 4 cars in France even though he’s not old enough to obtain a driver’s license in California.
The 15-year-old freshman who’s enrolled in online classes at Epic Charter School in Corona became the first American driver to finish on the podium at the Feed Racing Volant F4 finals last month, taking third place in a field of international contenders at Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours, one of France’s top F1 racetracks.
Truly Adams races in the Feed Racing Volant F4 Finals in France.
(Troy Adams Coaching)
Adams is bilingual in English and Spanish and learning French to help further his desired career in racing. He’s won kart races in Spain and was the fastest driver at the Mexico F4 Series test. He’s preparing for the 2026 French Formula 4 season next year, which is the path toward being a Formula 1 driver. Entry into the series requires $300,000 in funding, so he’s seeking sponsorships and partnerships.
“I love racing cars because of the thrill of it, passing cars, getting passed, going 130 mph in the straightaway,” he said.
His father, Troy, serves as his driving coach. His mother, Kara, is his driver when he’s in Southern California. In the last year, he’s traveled throughout the United States and to France, Portugal, Spain and Italy for competitions.
“I played every sport growing up — soccer, football, basketball, golf, tennis, rugby, swimming,” he said. “I tried to play the guitar. I tried to play piano. I tried to play everything.”
He said he has begun studying for his California driving test in September of 2026.
Asked what he might tell the instructor in the car, he said, “I’ll tell him I’m a professional race car driver and do you want to go more than the speed limit?”
This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].
Filipinos protest outside a police station in Manila on Monday, calling for the release of protesters detained Sunday at a demonstration against government corruption, which they blame for a severe lack of flood control infrastructure that has resulted in some residents being inundated year-round. Photo by Francis R. Malasig/EPA
Sept. 22 (UPI) — The Philippines was bracing for “catastrophic” damage Monday from a supertyphoon that came ashore in the far north of the country, packing winds of more than 140 mph., and forcing the evacuation of thousands of people.
The country’s weather bureau said typhoon Ragasa posed a “high risk of life-threatening storm surge” in excess of 10 feet with authorities warning of extensive damage to property and infrastructure from flooding and landslides, as well as the wind.
Ragasa came ashore in the remote Batanes or Babuyan islands, about 60 miles off the northern coast of Luzon, the main island of the Philippine archipelago, bringing down power lines in Abra and Cagayan pronvinces on the mainland.
In Manila and across large areas of the country, schools and government offices were shut to reduce the risks to human health and safety from the supertyphoon, which is the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane.
The impact in regions as far away as the Visayas and Mindanao, 800 miles to the south, was due to it boosting the effect of a potent southwest monsoon that had already brought weeks of flooding to the central and southern Philippines.
Taiwan was also impacted, with heavy rains prompting authorities to evacuate hundreds of residents in Hualien, a county on the eastern coast.
The typhoon was expected to track northwestwards, bypassing Taiwan, headed for southern China, where authorities in Guangdong Province were warning of a “catastrophic, large-scale disaster” in the coming days.
The typhoon is not expected to come ashore from the South China Sea until Wednesday, but residents have been advised of heavy rains and strong winds as early as Tuesday with the city of Shenzhen planning a massive operation to move 400,000 people out of harm’s way.
Train services in the province have already halted operations.
To the south in Hong Kong, authorities were warning residents of a “rapid deterioration” of the weather on Tuesday, although the Education Department was still weighing a decision on whether to close schools.
Hong Kong International Airport was preparing for a 36-hour period of full flight cancellations, the longest ever such suspension of civil aviation, due to go into effect at 6 p.m. local time on Tuesday through 6 a.m. Thursday.
Cathay Pacific, the territory’s main carrier, said it expected to cancel about 500 flights while Hongkong Airlines cancelled at least 93 through Thursday, according to the carrier’s website.
For both the Dodgers and San Diego Padres, the assignment over the next few weeks figured to be simple:
Take care of business and beat the teams you’re supposed to.
After all, the Dodgers are beginning a stretch of 15 straight games against clubs below .500. The Padres, meanwhile, will play 13 of their next 16 games against opponents with losing records, the lone exception being the 68-67 Cincinnati Reds.
It appeared to be an opportunity for each contender to stack up wins, build late-season momentum and try to wrest away control of a division race that the Dodgers currently lead by two games.
The only problem: They both flunked their first test on Friday.
Beating the bad teams, it turns out, isn’t always as easy as it seems.
In Los Angeles, the Dodgers suffered a lackluster 3-0 loss to the underperforming Arizona Diamondbacks, managing just three hits and getting only one runner in scoring position en route to suffering their seventh shutout this season. The Padres, meanwhile, were knocked around by the tanking Minnesota Twins in a 7-4 defeat earlier in the evening.
It meant, for one night, the standings remained static.
Instead of catapulting themselves into exceedingly soft portions of their schedules, both teams stumbled to equally disappointing results.
At Chavez Ravine, the Dodgers’ loss snapped their four-game winning streak — halting their recent upswing both on the mound and at the plate.
Starting pitcher Blake Snell gave up three runs in 5⅓ innings and battled through a stark drop in fastball velocity. After entering the night averaging 95.4 mph with his heater, Snell was stuck closer to 93 mph in his first start since the birth of his second child last weekend.
“I had a busy week, man. A lot going on,” Snell said of his velocity drop. “I’m not worried about [it]. I know what’s going on. So it’ll come back. I’m zero worried about it. I mean, I was aware of it. But I’m not gonna push it. It is what it is. It’s what I had today. Just gotta be better.”
Dodgers pitcher Blake Snell delivers in the first inning Friday against the Diamondbacks.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Though he struck out eight batters and allowed only four hits, one of them was costly: a two-run home run by Blaze Alexander in the fourth, on a fastball over the plate that clocked in at only 93.4 mph. Snell’s night ended after two more knocks brought in a third run in the sixth, with Corbin Carroll hitting a leadoff double and scoring on Gabriel Moreno’s RBI single.
The bigger problem for the Dodgers (77-58), however, was their offense.
Arizona starter Zac Gallen entered the night in the midst of a dismal contract season, beginning play with a 5.13 earned-run average despite improved form in August. Against the Dodgers, though, he was lights out, yielding only two hits in six scoreless innings with eight strikeouts and three walks.
“We just obviously couldn’t figure anything out,” manager Dave Roberts said. “We just really couldn’t put anything together all night long.”
Indeed, even more troublesome was the Dodgers’ inability to generate much against the Diamondbacks’ bullpen — a woebegone unit that has spoiled Arizona’s playoff aspirations by ranking 26th in the majors with a 4.73 ERA.
Andy Pages managed a two-out single in the seventh but was left stranded. After that, the Dodgers’ only other baserunner came on a walk from Teoscar Hernández in the game’s penultimate at-bat.
“This was the first one in a while … that we’ve seen sort of a lackluster performance,” Roberts said, his club unable to extend its momentum after a sweep of the Reds. “Obviously you’ve got to give credit to Gallen, too. But it was one of those nights that I just didn’t see the at-bats that we’ve been seeing the last week.”
Of course, things didn’t go much better for the Padres (75-60) on Friday, either.
Before their game in Minnesota, the team announced that shortstop Xander Bogaerts was going on the injured list with a foot fracture, which could keep him out for the rest of the regular season. Then, Nestor Cortes followed up his six shutout innings against the Dodgers last week with a three-inning, three-run clunker that was punctuated with an ejection.
The night served as a missed opportunity for both NL West pace-setters; the Padres squandering a chance to cut the Dodgers’ two-game lead in half, only for the Dodgers to whiff on an opening to grow their lead at the top of the standings.
And in the coming days and weeks, both clubs will have to try to take care of business better. Because with no head-to-head matchups left between the Dodgers and Padres in the regular season, beating bad teams — and avoiding ugly losses like Friday’s — could dictate who ultimately wins the division.
“We’ve got to play well,” Roberts said. “Whether it’s the schedule or a tougher opponent, I don’t really think it matters. We got to go out and play good baseball and take good at-bats and just stack wins.”
Freeman, Call back in action
Despite the loss, the Dodgers did get good news on the injury front Friday, with both first baseman Freddie Freeman and outfielder Alex Call back in action after missing Wednesday’s game.
Freeman had been battling a neck stinger, but returned to the starting lineup and drew a walk in an otherwise 0-for-3 performance. Call avoided an IL stint after having a flare-up in his back on Tuesday, and came off the bench as a pinch-hitter for a groundout in the seventh.
The Dodgers might be sprinting toward the finish line this year, trying to edge out the San Diego Padres in a tight National League West race.
But on Tuesday night, they made a 6-3 win over the Cincinnati Reds feel more like a nice, leisurely stroll.
Clayton Kershaw continued his renaissance season, pitching five innings of one-run ball to earn a fifth-consecutive victory (his longest such streak since the end of the 2022 season). The offense steadily wore the Reds’ pitching staff down, answering a first-inning Cincinnati run with one of their own before taking the lead for good in the fourth.
And it all added up to a third-straight win for the Dodgers (76-57), keeping them alone in first place atop the division.
Kershaw provided the bedrock for Tuesday’s victory.
The left-hander was pitching on four days’ rest for the third time this season (more than anyone else on the team), so that Shohei Ohtani could be lined up to start ahead of an off day on Wednesday. And early on, the Reds (68-65) tagged him with a quick run, after Spencer Steer led off with a double and later scored on Miguel Andújar’s groundout.
Starting with that grounder, however, Kershaw proceeded to retire the last 14 batters he faced. Six came via strikeout, marking his second-highest strikeout total this season. And of balls put in play, only four were “hard hit” (with an exit velocity greater than 95 mph). Not one left the bat at more than 100 mph.
It was the latest example of the 37-year-old left-hander’s newfound recipe for success: Once again hitting his spots with an 88-mph fastball, leaning heavily on a slider that generated five whiffs and four outs, and mixing in his trademark curveball and newfangled splitter to keep an entirely right-handed Reds lineup off-balance in a 72-pitch outing.
Given the low pitch count, Kershaw might have been able to go past the fifth. He and manager Dave Roberts appeared to have a brief conversation in the dugout before shaking hands, a sign his night was over. But between his quick (by modern-day standards, at least) four-day turnaround, and the team’s careful management of his workload overall this season, Kershaw’s five innings were plenty.
On the season, Kershaw is 9-2 with a 3.06 ERA, third-best among Dodgers starters this year. He also finishes August with a 1.88 ERA in five starts, third-best among National League starters for the month.
While Kershaw cruised, the Dodgers’ offense also found a groove.
They erased the early 1-0 deficit in the bottom of the first, when Mookie Betts walked, Freddie Freeman doubled and Betts scored on a throwing error by Reds left fielder Austin Hays.
They took a 2-1 lead in the fourth, after a leadoff double from Teoscar Hernández, an infield single from Michael Conforto on a scorching comebacker that ripped the glove right off the hand of Reds pitcher Nick Martinez, and a sacrifice fly from Kiké Hernández (who returned to the lineup for the first time since early July after being out with an elbow injury).
Then, in the sixth, they broke the game open with a four-run rally.
Will Smith turned around a center-cut fastball for an opposite-field, leadoff home run, a positive sign for the slumping catcher who entered the night with a .150 batting average in August and only one long ball in his previous 25 games.
Miguel Rojas came off the bench for a two-run double later in the inning, smoking a flyball to deep center that got Noelvi Marte (who was making his first career MLB start in the middle of the outfield) turned around at the warning track.
Ohtani followed that with an RBI single to right, helping him break a one-for-16 skid.
The only bad news for the Dodgers on Tuesday came pregame, when left-handed reliever Alex Vesia was placed on the injured list with a right oblique strain. The severity of his injury was not immediately known.
But even without him, the Dodgers’ bullpen largely coasted in relief of Kershaw. Blake Treinen and Tanner Scott, both having recently returned from the IL, pitched scoreless innings in the eighth and ninth (giving Scott his first save since returning). And though Hays hit a two-run home run in the seventh off Ben Casparius, it did little to make Tuesday feel like anything more than a late-season cakewalk — even amid a mad dash down the season’s closing stretch.
Sasaki’s latest rehab start
In triple-A Oklahoma City, rookie pitcher Roki Sasaki made the third start of his minor-league rehab stint, giving up three runs in 3 ⅔ innings on five hits, two walks and four strikeouts. The most encouraging takeaway from the outing was Sasaki’s fastball velocity, which averaged 96 mph for a second-straight outing and topped out at 98.8 mph — the hardest he has thrown in his recovery from a shoulder injury. Sasaki is expected to make at least one more rehab start before being ready to be activated.
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.”
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.”
A veteran high-speed driver has died after losing control of his vehicle while driving at nearly 300 miles per hour Sunday during the 2025 Bonneville Speed Week event in northwestern Utah.
Chris Raschke, 60, was treated by medical professionals, but died at the scene of the accident at the Bonneville Salt Flats, near Wendover, Utah, according to a press release by event organizer Southern California Timing Assn.
“When you lose anybody in the community, it’s always tough,” race director and SCTA board president Keith Pedersen told The Times on Tuesday. “And somebody as well-liked and known as Chris, that makes it even tougher.”
In addition to being a “very accomplished race car driver,” Pedersen said, Raschke was also “very, very friendly, very competitive. But he’s also the type of person that if you needed a part or something, he would give it to you and say, ‘Yeah, just bring it back when you’re done.’”
According to Raschke’s Speed Demon bio page, he was “the first official employee at Ventura Raceway in the early 80’s” and over the years became involved in practically all aspects of motor sports.
Also an employee of ARP Auto Parts, which makes fasteners and other products for race cars, Raschke worked as part of the Speed Demon crew for more than a decade before becoming a driver for the team.
At last year’s Speed Week, Raschke topped out at 446 mph, which Pedersen said was the fastest measured mile at the event. This year, he was driving the latest iteration of his team’s vehicle, the Speed Demon 3. Pederson confirmed that Raschke’s last recorded speed during Sunday’s race was 283 mph.
A Facebook post from the Speed Demon team account stated: “At this time, we ask everyone to please respect Chris’s family, friends, and the Speed Demon team. We are deeply devastated.”
The Tooele County Sheriff’s Office is investigating Raschke’s death, with assistance from the SCTA. Sgt. Dan Lerdahl told The Times that the crash is being viewed as an accident, although it is unclear at this point whether the cause was “a roadway issue, a mechanical issue or just a freak thing.”
Racing was suspended following Rashke’s crash but resumed Monday. Pedersen said canceling the event, which runs through Friday at the at the Bonneville Salt Flats, was never really a consideration.
“We’ve been doing Speed Week for 77 years, and over those years, there have been other fatalities out here. And it’s always a tragedy,” Pedersen said. “But we typically regroup. … We grieve and we race. Chris would have wanted us to race, and we’re continuing to do that.”
Emma Watson, who played Hermione Granger in all eight “Harry Potter” films, lost her driving privileges for six months Wednesday in Britain after racking up more than a dozen points on her driving record in the space of two years.
She was also ordered to pay more than $1,400 (1,044 pounds), according to multiple media reports Wednesday. Watson didn’t attend the hearing at High Wycombe Magistrates’ Court, about 30 miles northwest of London. She had previously pleaded guilty to the offense via mail.
The “Beauty and the Beast” actor, 35, already had 9 points on her record, the BBC reported, tied to offenses in October 2023, November 2023 and January 2024.
The most recent citation came on July 31, 2024, for driving her Audi A3 38 mph in a 30 mph zone, according to the Mirror. That’s the same car that reportedly got towed in February 2024 after Watson didn’t see a “no parking” sign, blocked a driveway, went to meet her mom at a pub across the street and trapped a couple of cars in a gated compound for more than three hours.
Also, in a strange coincidence, actor Zoe Wanamaker, who appeared as flying-broom instructor Madame Hooch in 2001’s “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” got the same treatment for almost the same offense shortly after Watson’s license was pulled, the Sun reported Wednesday. The actor, who works primarily in television, most recently got popped for going 46 mph in a 40 mph zone. She too hit 12 points on her record with her fourth speeding citation.
Wanamaker was fined $885 (660 pounds) and hit with $488 (364 pounds) in court costs, per the Sun. Watson’s total payment included court costs as well.
Speeding offenses in Britain carry 3 to 6 points each, depending on the circumstance, and stay on a driver’s record for four years. Driving under the influence — called “drink driving” or “drug driving” in the U.K. — carries up to 11 points, as do violations including vehicular manslaughter, racing on the highway and “dangerous” or “furious” driving. Serious violations stay on a driver’s record for up to 11 years.
HBO on Tuesday released this image of actor Nick Frost as his “Harry Potter” character, Rubeus Hagrid.
(HBO)
Watson, who last appeared on the big screen as Meg in 2019’s “Little Women,” followed by a role in the promotonal short film “Paradoxe” for a Prada campaign in 2022, is studying for the equivalent of a Ph.D in creative writing at Oxford University. She graduated from Brown University in Providence, R.I. with a bachelor’s degree in 2014.
Also on the “Harry Potter” front, as the wizarding tale prepares for its TV series reboot, HBO on Tuesday released a first-look photo of “How to Train Your Dragon” actor Nick Frost done up as Hagrid. Robbie Coltrane, who played half-giant gamekeeper Rubeus Hagrid in the movies, died in October 2022 of multiple organ failure after two years of illness.
LONDON — A little more than two years ago, Amanda Anisimova took a break from tennis because of burnout. A year ago, working her way back into the game, the American lost when she had to go through qualifying for Wimbledon because her ranking of 189th was too low to get into the main bracket automatically.
Look at Anisimova now: She’s a Grand Slam finalist for the first time after upsetting No. 1-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 in a compelling contest at a steamy Centre Court on Thursday.
In Saturday’s final, Anisimova will face Iga Swiatek, who is a five-time major champion but advanced to her first title match at the All England Club with a 6-2, 6-0 victory over Belinda Bencic.
Swiatek was dominant throughout, never letting Bencic get into their semifinal and wrapping things up in 71 minutes with serves at up to 119 mph and twice as many winners, 26, as unforced errors, 13.
So it turns out she can do just fine on grass courts, thank you very much.
“Tennis keeps surprising me. I thought I lived through everything, even though I’m young. I thought I experienced everything on the court. But I didn’t experience playing well on grass,” Swiatek said. “That’s the first time.”
She’s 5-0 in major finals — 4-0 on the French Open’s clay, 1-0 on the U.S. Open’s hard courts — but only once had been as far as the quarterfinals at Wimbledon until now. It’s been more than a year since Swiatek won a title anywhere, part of why the 24-year-old from Poland relinquished the top ranking to Sabalenka in October and is seeded No. 8 this fortnight.
Saturday’s winner will be the eighth consecutive first-time Wimbledon women’s champion.
The 13th-seeded Anisimova, who was born in New Jersey and grew up in Florida, was playing in her second major semifinal after losing at that stage at the 2019 French Open at age 17.
“This doesn’t feel real right now,” Anisimova said after ending the 2-hour, 36-minute contest with a forehand winner on her fourth match point. “I was absolutely dying out there. I don’t know how I pulled it out.”
In May 2023, Anisimova took time off, saying she had been “struggling with my mental health” for nearly a year.
Now 23, she is playing as well as ever, her crisp groundstrokes, particularly on the backhand side, as strong and smooth as anyone’s. She is guaranteed to break into the top 10 of the WTA rankings for the first time next week, no matter what happens in the title match.
“If you told me I would be in the final of Wimbledon, I would not believe you,” Anisimova said with a laugh. “At least not this soon, because it’s been a year turnaround since coming back and to be in this spot, it’s not easy. … To be in the final is just indescribable, honestly.”
For Sabalenka, who is 0-3 in semifinals at the All England Club, this defeat prevented her from becoming the first woman to reach four consecutive Grand Slam finals since Serena Williams won four major trophies in a row a decade ago.
Sabalenka missed Wimbledon last year because of an injured shoulder, then won the U.S. Open in September for her third Slam title.
She was the runner-up to Madison Keys at the Australian Open, and to Coco Gauff at the French Open, where Sabalenka’s post-match comments drew criticism and led her to apologize privately and publicly to Gauff. Sabalenka and Gauff smoothed things over before the start of play at the All England Club, dancing together and posting videos on social media.
On Thursday, Sabalenka began her news conference with as simple a statement as can be, “She was the better player,” then laughed.
“Losing sucks, you know?” she added in response to the first question from a reporter. “You always feel like … you don’t want to exist anymore.”
Anisimova improved to 6-3 against Sabalenka, a 27-year-old from Belarus, and two of the hardest hitters in the game traded booming shots and loud shouts.
They smacked big serves: Sabalenka reached 120 mph, Anisimova 112 mph. They ended points quickly with first-strike aggressiveness. And Anisimova saved 11 of the 14 break points she faced.
The average exchange was over after just three shots. By the end, 167 of the 214 total points lasted fewer than five strokes, and just seven contained nine or more.
Probably a good thing, too, given the heat.
The temperature hit 88 degrees in the first set, which was delayed twice because spectators in the lower level — with no shade — felt unwell.
MILWAUKEE — His breaths were heavy. His answers were interrupted by deep inhales. And beads of sweat were dripping from his forehead.
Tired? Perhaps.
But personally invigorated? There seemed little doubt.
For the newly turned 31-year-old Shohei Ohtani, the deep breaths and sweat drips were just a sign of another day’s work in his return to full-time two-way duties, coming as he spoke to reporters following his latest game as both starting pitcher and designated hitter for the Dodgers on Saturday.
“As long as I can play the way I want to play,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton as he celebrated his birthday, “I usually spend my birthday just like any other day.”
The way Ohtani wants to play, of course, is exactly how he’s been doing it for the last month. After being unable to pitch for the first year and a half of his Dodgers tenure — limited only to hitting while recovering from a second career Tommy John surgery — he is finally back to being a fully healthy two-way star, taking the mound once per week in addition to leading off the lineup every day.
Four weeks into his return to pitching, the results have been (mostly) positive for the reigning National League MVP.
In six innings as a pitcher, he has given up just one run, four hits and four walks while striking out six batters (a quality start by any definition of the term, if considered as one pitching outing).
And as a hitter, he is still posting MVP-caliber numbers, entering Monday leading the National League with 30 home runs and a .610 slugging percentage, while ranking second in OPS (.990, behind only teammate Will Smith), 13th in RBIs (56) and 23rd in batting average (.278).
“He’s just handling it the right way,” manager Dave Roberts said a few weeks ago, personally amazed at watching Ohtani’s two-way talents up close for the first time. “He’s just unflappable.”
The most encouraging signs over the last month have been with Ohtani’s progression on the mound.
Even after a second major elbow surgery, he is still routinely eclipsing 100 mph with his fastball, while commanding it in different parts of the strike zone. He has quickly rediscovered the feel for his breaking stuff, generating whiffs with his sweeper and traditional slider. He’s also doing it with a new, slightly lowered arm angle, one that Roberts said he didn’t develop by accident.
“He understands his delivery and what he’s trying to do,” Roberts said. “So obviously coming off the second Tommy John, I think this probably puts his arm in the best position, [where he] feels best. I like where he’s at.”
The only missing piece to Ohtani’s pitching remains the length of his outings.
So far, he has yet to pitch past the second inning. And while Roberts called it “feasible” for him to get stretched out to five or six innings, the team still doesn’t “know what that’s going to be,” he said.
“In a rehab progression, it’s really important to just take one step at a time,” Ohtani echoed. “There are times when I may be able to go another inning, but it’s really important not to take unnecessary risks and make sure that I can progress consistently. It’s always been this way in terms of my rehab progression. So I’m following what the team is also asking me as well.”
The big question, to this point, is how much Ohtani’s return to pitching has impacted his potency with the bat.
At various points since June 10, when Ohtani ramped up to three innings in his final simulated live session before returning to game action as a pitcher, Roberts has noted some normal instances of fatigue that Ohtani has felt.
The slugger’s hitting numbers have ticked down in that span as well, with Ohtani batting only .239 since that day — albeit with seven home runs in 24 games and a robust .919 OPS.
On days he pitches, Ohtani has still gone 5 for 16 with a double, triple and home run. On the days immediately after a pitching outing, however, he is 0 for 12 with less hard contact than his thunderous swing usually produces.
There have also been incremental drops in some of Ohtani’s underlying numbers, including exit velocity (95.5 mph average before May 10; 93.3 mph average since) and swing speed (76.3 mph before; 75.8 mph since) according to data from Baseball Savant.
The decline hasn’t been lost on Ohtani.
On Saturday, he said he doesn’t “feel too bad at the plate” physically, but acknowledged he hasn’t punished mistakes as well as he typically does.
“Usually, it’s a matter of just a little bit of a difference in the way that I’m swinging,” he said. “So just have to find it in the cage work, and hopefully be able to apply that on the field.”
Roberts also downplayed the notion as the product of a small sample size, insisting he hasn’t seen “much of a difference” in Ohtani at the plate since he resumed his two-way duties.
“I think he’s still taking good at-bats,” Roberts said. “I still don’t mind where he’s at right now.”
It will, nonetheless, be a dynamic the Dodgers closely monitor as Ohtani continues to try and maximize his dual talents. The longer his offensive numbers drag down, the more caution the club could exercise in his long-term pitching plan.
His bat, after all, remains the single most valuable tool on the team’s entire roster — with the Dodgers wanting to ensure, above all else, he can be a force at the plate as they try to defend their World Series title.
But, on the whole, his pitching progress has been stark during his first month back as a two-way player, and his overall production is still among the best in baseball; with his 4.4 total wins above replacement, according to Fangraphs, trailing only breakout Cubs star Pete Crow-Armstrong for the best mark in the NL.
“[I’ve been] really, really impressed,” Roberts said Saturday, after getting his latest look at two-way Ohtani, “how he’s continuing to get better and better each time out.”
In the Dodgers’ 5-1 win over the Kansas City Royals — a victory that clinched the weekend series and gave the club a 5-1 record on this past week’s road trip — Wrobleski continued to quietly impress as a depth pitching option for the Dodgers, pitching six scoreless innings that were short on flash but long on substance; serving as the latest productive outing in his suddenly auspicious sophomore season.
“Justin’s confidence is at an all-time high,” manager Dave Roberts said. “And he’s a confident young man already.”
Entering the game behind opener Lou Trivino at the start of the second, Wrobleski made easy work of a struggling Kansas City offense, giving up just three hits and one walk in a six-strikeout showing as the Dodgers (53-32) pulled away at the plate.
Kiké Hernández hit a two-run homer in the second. Will Smith added a solo shot in the sixth. And by the time the team tacked on two more runs in the seventh, such extra insurance was already looking unneeded.
Instead, Wrobleski further raised his stock in what has been a surprise midseason rejuvenation, turning in his best career performance at the big-league level.
Over his 83-pitch outing, the Royals (39-45) only once managed to even put a runner in scoring position. They squandered all three leadoff hitters who reached base. And during their best opportunity to rally in the third, Wrobleski mowed through the heart of their order, sandwiching one strikeout of Jonathan India and fielder’s choice grounder from Vinnie Pasquantino with a statement-sending punchout of Royals star Bobby Witt Jr., getting him to whiff on a 96-mph fastball and putaway two-strike slider.
“Bobby Witt is one of the best hitters in the game,” Roberts said. “And for him to beat him with the fastball, he wasn’t doing that last year.”
Indeed, few saw Wrobleski’s surge coming this season.
Wrobleski was optioned back to the minor leagues after that, and made only one MLB appearance over the next two months: a four-inning outing in mop-up relief duty during a May 15 blowout of the Athletics.
At the start of June, however, he was called back up to make a spot start in St. Louis, turning in a decent six-inning, four-run effort. And since then, he has continued to get better each time out. In his last 20 innings — all of them coming in bulk relief — he has conceded just four earned runs while striking out 21 batters. His overall ERA in five June appearances was 2.73.
“Having that bad one in Washington, honestly, set me back in a good way,” Wrobleski said. “I had to go back down, make a few adjustments.”
And now, he joked, that D.C. start “feels like it was three years ago.”
The biggest difference with Wrobleski of late has been his fastball. In that April start against the Nationals, it averaged just 93 mph. In every outing since, it has sat around 96-97 mph, and topped out above 99 mph.
Wrobleski credited the improvement with some small mechanical tweaks, having adopted a wider base in his pre-pitch stance and incorporated a rocking motion in his delivery to help him direct his momentum toward the plate.
But also, he said he has simply found a way to throw with maximum effort more consistently — coupling it with an increased reliance on his sinker to attack the zone and induce quick outs.
“I think it just goes back to me being me,” said Wrobleski, an 11th round pick out of Oklahoma State in 2021. “That’s how I got here was doing that. I got away from it a little bit, tried to quote-unquote ‘throw strikes,’ and when you do that, it leads to results that are not desirable. But at the end of the day, [I just want to] throw my best stuff for as long as I can until they take the ball. I think that’s been a major key.”
As a result, Wrobleski’s name is quickly rising among the hierarchy of young Dodgers pitching.
The fact that he was even on this road trip was a sign of the organization’s growing confidence in his abilities.
During the team’s last homestand, fellow young talent Emmet Sheehan returned from Tommy John surgery with four sharp innings, and seemed primed to occupy an open spot in the Dodgers’ rotation moving forward. However, with Sheehan not yet fully built up, the club elected to option him back to triple A and have Wrobleski pitch twice in a six-day span this week, with a five-inning, two-run outing in Colorado on Tuesday preceding Sunday’s gem in Kansas City.
Sheehan should be back in the majors soon, having pitched six perfect innings with 13 strikeouts in a start with Oklahoma City on Wednesday (manager Dave Roberts said Sheehan’s next outing will also be with OKC, though he could still rejoin the Dodgers before the end of their upcoming homestand).
But now, he’s not the only former prospect showing flashes of being an impact option in the majors.
“He’s changed a lot,” Roberts said of the team’s evaluation of Wrobleski. “We’ve always valued him and thought a lot of him as far as the talent. But right now, he’s getting major league hitters out … And in the spirit of getting opportunities while earning them, he’s doing that.”
Moreover, the Fourth of July means we’re in the heart of boating season. There are 4 million recreational boaters in California, according to the state Division of Boating and Waterways. There’s an average of 514 boating accidents a year. And July is the worst month.
I’ve been boating at Tahoe for 55 years, and on some water since I was a teen.
These are my basic rules for safety and enjoyment, at least in a vessel up to about 30 feet. My Tahoe boats mostly have been 22 to 24 feet.
For starters, if Lake Tahoe winds are already blowing at 10 mph and it’s not even noon, be smart. Don’t venture out in a recreational powerboat. The water’s likely to get much choppier in the afternoon.
If you’re out there and see white caps forming, head for shore.
If lots of sailboats show up, you don’t belong on the water with them. Get off.
And another thing: Don’t pay much attention to the manufacturer’s claim of how many people a boat will hold. Boat makers tend to exaggerate. If it says 10 people will fit, figure on maybe eight tops.
Sure, 10 may be able to squeeze aboard, but the extra weight causes the boat to ride deeper in the water and become more vulnerable to taking on water in heavy swells. That can lead to capsizing. And all those passengers squirming around makes driving more difficult because of the constantly changing weight balance.
But most important: Monitor the weather forecasts before you even get near the water.
Lake Tahoe is big and beautiful — 22 miles long and 12 miles wide, at 6,224 feet in the Sierra mountains. It holds enough water to cover all of California by 14 inches. Two-thirds of the lake is in California, one-third in Nevada.
Weather patterns vary. Scary winds and thunderstorms can be at one end of the lake, and calmer water and blue skies at the other.
Even on calm mornings, Lake Tahoe’s weather and boating conditions can turn hazardous quickly.
(Max Whittaker / For The Times)
My wincing at reports of the multi-fatality accident and many other boating mishaps that Saturday afternoon off the south and west shores stem from repeated references to all of it being caused by a sudden, unexpected storm.
The intensity of the storm may have been unexpected — north winds up to 45 mph, producing eight-foot waves. But winds had been forecast by the National Weather Service in the high teens and into the 20s. And that should have been enough warning for boaters: Stay off the water.
The person who made the most sense after the tragedy was Mary Laub, a retired financial analyst who lives in Minden, Nev., over the steep hill from South Lake Tahoe. She and her husband keep a 26-foot Regal cabin cruiser in Tahoe Keys on the south shore. And she habitually watches weather forecasts.
She had planned to go for a cruise that Saturday but dropped the idea after seeing the forecast.
“The afternoon winds pick up at Tahoe. If they’re approaching 10 [mph] before noon, I don’t go out,” she told me. “I saw that forecast and said, ‘No way.’
“If there’s any whisper of wind, I don’t go out. We’ve been caught out there before. I don’t take a chance.”
The people who died were in a practically new 27-foot Chris-Craft Launch, a high-end, gorgeous open-bow boat. It was the vessel’s third time on the water. Ten people were aboard, mostly in their 60s and 70s. They were relatives and lifelong friends, celebrating a woman’s 71st birthday. She was among the fatalities.
They were trying to return from popular Emerald Bay to their west side home in midafternoon when eight-foot swells swamped the boat, deadening the engine and capsizing the vessel off rocky Rubicon Point near D.L. Bliss State Park. They were tossed into the abnormally cold water and presumably drowned, perhaps paralyzed by hypothermia.
A mother and daughter in the party, both wearing life jackets, were rescued by a Washoe County sheriff’s team. Whether the others were wearing life jackets hadn’t been revealed as of this writing.
One four-person crew in a 24-foot open-bow MasterCraft grabbed their life jackets, wisely abandoned the boat and swam to shore. They scampered up rocky cliffs in their bare feet to safety. The boat was practically totaled.
I called meteorologist Dawn Johnson at the National Weather Service in Reno.
She said the forecast for that Saturday afternoon had been for winds up to 20 mph and gusts to “25 or so.”
There also was up to a 25% chance of thunderstorms. “If you have thunderstorms on the lake, make sure you get off the water,” Johnson said. “You have a higher risk of being struck by lightning on open water.”
There were strong winds Friday night, she recalled, but by 11 a.m. Saturday they had dropped to 5 to 10 mph. Then they picked up as forecast.
“We see winds gust at that magnitude multiple times a month, most likely in the afternoon,” she said. “Sustained winds reach 25 to 30 mph.”
But normally they produce waves of only 2 to 4 feet, she added. “We’re trying to figure out exactly what happened.”
Four-foot waves are a hurricane in my book.
And Mother Nature doesn’t care about a boater’s weekend plans.
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.
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.
