It’s Super Bowl Sunday, bringing an end to another exciting football season and leaving a small gap between the end of the NFL season and the beginning of spring training.
As the Dodgers prepare to once
again defend their title, they do so without a concrete plan for the starting rotation. While the quartet of All-Stars remains a fixture, the final one to two spots are seemingly up for grabs, and one pitcher looking to make an impact as a starter will be Roki Sasaki.
Sasaki’s first season in the big leagues was a mixed bag, scuffling through eight starts before landing on the injured list. Once he came back in late September, he became the Dodgers’ go-to bullpen option late in postseason games as a dynamic force in relief.
For Sasaki to truly get his shot as a starter, Dave Roberts insisted that Sasaki develop an effective third pitch to compliment his fastball and splitter, as Dylan Hernandez of the California Post notes that the right-hander has been working on incorporating a cutter and a two-seamer.
“For me,” Roberts said, “he needs to develop a third pitch.”
With just five days until pitchers and catchers report to Camelback Ranch, Sasaki posted a video to his Instagram of himself warming up on the mound of the University of Arizona’s baseball field.
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Manny Randhawa of MLB.com writes about former Dodgers second baseman Steve Sax’s collaboration with sports artist Opie Otterstad, and how they both have found a way to honor Sax’s late son, John, through digitized art.
“The NFT has what’s called a utility attached to it,” Steve said. “And that utility is that everybody who owns one, we’re going to become a team. And every year, we’re going to have an event where we all get together and everyone’s going to give their input on what we should do the next year to raise money for the foundation… This is how we can honor my son,” Steve said. “And that is so important to me.”
Former outfielder Terrance Gore passed away on Saturday at the age of 34. The speedster appeared in a combined 112 regular season games across parts of eight regular seasons, helping win titles with the Kansas City Royals in 2015, the Dodgers in 2020 and the Atlanta Braves in 2021. Former Royals general manager Dayton Moore reflected on Gore as a beloved teammate, per Anne Rogers of MLB.com.
“There have been very few players who can take over a baseball game,” said former Royals general manager Dayton Moore, the architect of the 2014-15 postseason teams. “That’s exactly what he did. He became a fan favorite. He was beloved by his teammates. And he was just fearless and impactful on the bases but also off the field.”
