“A record is a record, but it is important to get the win and for Roki to firmly stay in the team’s pitching rotation for the year,” Iguchi said.
Counting an out he got at the end of the start before his perfecto, Sasaki has now retired 52 consecutive batters.
Sasaki grew up in Iwate Prefecture in Japan’s northeast. His father was killed in the 2011 tsunami, and his house was swept away. “It’s been 11 years but I cannot easily erase the agony and sadness I felt at the time,” Sasaki told Kyodo News last month.
After success in high school, he was handled carefully by the Marines, not pitching at all in 2020 while he did a strength training program. He appeared in just 11 games in 2021, with a 4-2 record and a 1.84 E.R.A., before a planned full load this year. In addition to his 100 m.p.h. heater, Sasaki throws a highly touted splitter.
Despite Sasaki’s heroics, the Marines, based in Chiba City about 25 miles east of Tokyo, are off to a slow start and are under .500. Assuming Sasaki starts Sunday, as expected (midnight Eastern time, 9 p.m. Pacific on Saturday), he will face the Buffaloes, the team that knocked the Marines out in the semifinals of last year’s playoffs.
Can Sasaki spin another masterpiece? It hardly seems impossible: He was already perfect against the Buffaloes once, and Orix is a sub-.500 team that has scored the fewest runs in Japan so far this season, an average of just 2.5 a game.