"Hooting and hollering, the players raised the little paper cups in their hands and emptied the contents into their mouths to celebrate the three perfect innings delivered by Sasaki in an 11-inning, 2-1 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies that secured their place in the National League Championship Series. The emergence of Sasaki as an October hero was as unexpected as his relief performances in the NL Division Series were electric."
"Sasaki can point to when he started down the road to postseason glory. "The scene in the hotel," Sasaki said in Japanese. Sept. 8. Sasaki was in a hotel room in Oklahoma City, preparing to pitch the next day for the Dodgers' triple-A affiliate. While eating, he watched videos of himself pitching for Ofunato High School. His signature high leg kick was the same then as it was now, but what he did in the next phase of his delivery wasn't."
"Sasaki noticed that he used to be more explosive before landing his plant foot and releasing the baseball. "This is it," he said to himself. Right there, in his Oklahoma City hotel room, Sasaki started shadow pitching, wanting to recapture the feeling in his lower body from when he was viewed as the most talented pitcher his country had ever produced."
Roki Sasaki delivered three flawless relief innings to secure an 11-inning, 2-1 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies and send the Los Angeles Dodgers to the National League Championship Series. He had been hampered by a shoulder impingement five months earlier but regained form after a Sept. 8 hotel-room session in Oklahoma City, where he watched old high-school pitching videos and shadow pitched to recapture lower-body explosiveness. The next day he rediscovered a mid-to-upper-90s heat, with several pitches topping 100 mph. Manager Dave Roberts called one of his outings "one of the great all-time appearances out of the pen."
Read at Los Angeles Times
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