Roki Sasaki needs strong start for Dodgers against Cardinals

With a proven veteran ready to return to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ pitching staff, every start counts for the existing members of the rotation.

All eyes will be on right-hander Roki Sasaki when he starts for the Dodgers on Saturday in a road game against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Los Angeles left-hander Blake Snell is close to making his season debut and one of the current six starters will have to step aside. The Dodgers have remained committed to Sasaki as a starter, even as he went through a rocky spring training.

When the season started, left-hander Justin Wrobleski was a swing man until a sixth starter was needed. Now that he is in the rotation, Wrobleski has been one of the team’s steadiest pitchers.

Sasaki (1-2, 6.35 ERA), who has never faced the Cardinals, is coming off his first win of the season last Saturday against the Chicago Cubs. But he gave up four runs in the outing, his second most in a start this year, on seven hits. He did have a season-low one walk.

“I don’t think the (pitching) line does it justice,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who considered the performance Sasaki’s best outing of the season.

“I think him and (pitching coaches) Connor (McGuiness) and Mark (Prior) were working on some things and wanted to add a little bit more velocity to it. It simulates a fastball more versus some type of off-speed pitch. Good stuff to build off of.”

And yet the Dodgers’ biggest issue of late is with an offense that was not able to put up much of a fight in a 7-2 loss to the Cardinals in Friday’s series opener. Los Angeles is 5-8 in its last 13 games and has lost three in a row.

St. Louis received home runs from Nolan Gorman and Alec Burleson on Friday, while Jordan Walker had four hits and drove in a pair of runs to extend the team’s winning streak to five games.

The Cardinals delivered 12 hits in the victory after they had 14 in a win at Pittsburgh on Thursday.

St. Louis will send right-hander Michael McGreevy (1-2, 2.97) to the mound Saturday. In a no-decision against the Seattle Mariners on Sunday, McGreevy allowed just one run on five hits over six innings with no walks and six strikeouts.

McGreevy matched his season high in innings on a day when the bullpen had been taxed from prior usage.

“It’s that extra thing where you get to think about helping the team even more than just performing well,” McGreevy said. “You don’t go into it thinking, ‘I need to go deep here,’ because you don’t want to make the game bigger than it is. But to be able to do that with the bullpen being short-handed is awesome.”

McGreevy’s lone start against the Dodgers came June 8, 2025, when he gave up four runs over six innings, while taking the loss in a 7-3 game. The outing was just his fourth career start and his first one of 2025. He has three starts of one run or less this season.

With 11 wins in their past 16 games, the Cardinals have distanced themselves from an 8-8 start to the season.

–Field Level Media