Velocity

TORONTO — The Dodgers played 162 games in 193 days during the regular season. Then they played 10 more times in 18 days in the first three rounds of the playoffs.

It was a grind that gave way to a routine as comfortable as an old shoe.

That routine was upended when the Dodgers swept the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series, giving them a week off before the start of the World Series, the team’s longest break since February. And the Dodgers looked anything but rested and refreshed in Friday’s 11-4 shellacking by the Toronto Blue Jays, which left them trailing a postseason series for the first time since last fall’s NLDS.

“I’m pretty sure the guys kind of felt the velocity a little bit more,” said Miguel Rojas, one of just a handful of Dodgers who spoke to the media after the loss. “But there’s nothing that we can do. That’s not going to be an excuse for us to underperform.”

It may not be an excuse. But it could be an omen.

This World Series is the fifth in which a team that swept its best-of-seven LCS, as the Dodgers did, faced a team that needed to go seven games to win its series, as Toronto did. The team that swept and got the break lost each of the four previous World Series, winning just two of 18 games.

Dodger manager Dave Roberts dismissed that history Friday.

“I really don’t think the week layoff had anything to do with tonight,” he said. “We were rested. I thought we were in a good spot. We had a 2-0 lead. So I don’t think that had anything to do with it.”

Blake Snell, the pitcher who gave up that lead, brushed off the break as well.

“There’s no excuses. I need to be better,” said Snell, who went 10 days between starts, his longest break since coming off the injured list in August. “I don’t care if it’s a month off. Find a way to be ready.”

He wasn’t against the Blue Jays. After averaging 16 pitches an inning in 14 previous starts, he needed 29 to get through the first inning Friday. And after giving up two runs and six hits in 21 innings this postseason, he gave up five runs and eight hits in just five-plus innings in Toronto, with two of those runs coming on Dalton Varsho’s fourth-inning home run, the only homer Snell has conceded to a left-handed hitter this year.

Emmet Sheehan, who followed Snell to the mound, hadn’t pitched in two weeks. He had his worst outing of the year, facing four batters and watching three of them score.

“I felt good going into the game. I felt the same as I have been,” he said. “I thought I made some good pitches, and they made some really good swings.

“It’s not a good feeling.”

A prolonged break can affect pitchers more than hitters because after throwing with a slightly fatigued arm all season, they suddenly feel fresh and strong and their pitches lose some of their movement.

“You don’t want to feel too good. You feel too good, you try to throw too hard because you feel good. And it doesn’t go where you want it,” said Will Klein, who mopped up for the Dodgers, pitching a scoreless eighth inning. “[The ball] doesn’t go where you want it to because you’re used to pitching a little down, like 90 or 95%. You’re never really at 100.

‘There’s such a thing [as] too fresh.”

Klein’s last appearance in a big-league game was a month ago; since then he’s been working out at the Dodgers’ facility in Arizona. He said the team tried to keep the rest of their pitchers in their familiar routine with bullpen sessions or simulated games, but it’s not the same as throwing in high-leverage situations against opposing hitters in a World Series game before 44,353 fans, as Snell, Sheehan and Klein had to do Friday.

And the history shows the Dodgers aren’t the first team who have been broken by the break.

But they had less than 24 hours to wait for Game 2, which means they’re back into the comfortable — if exhausting — routine that got them to the World Series in the first place.

“There’s another one tomorrow,” Klein said. “We can’t go and unlose today, as much as we’d like to. Thinking about today isn’t going to help you win tomorrow.”

Aug. 14 (UPI) — Gullwing doors and high performance define Cadillac’s Elevated Velocity crossover electric vehicle concept that could turn off-roading into a luxury experience.

The Elevated Velocity is part of the luxury car brand’s portfolio of concept vehicles and features a raised chassis for better ground clearance, along with its gull-wing doors and futuristic lighting.

“Elevated Velocity builds on the design principles introduced in the Opulent Velocity concept and revealed in 2024,” said Bryan Nesbitt, vice president of Global Design at General Motors Corp, in a news release on Thursday.

The concept integrates “Cadillac’s luxury, technology and performance in an increasingly popular performance-luxury crossover,” Nesbitt added.

The Elevated Velocity offers a lifted chassis for greater ground clearance and relatively high-speed off-road capabilities, while also providing an “elevated luxury experience,” Cadillac senior designer Alexandra Dymowska said.

“The concept envisions a refined, exhilarating experience, where the art of mastery meets the rush of adrenaline,” she explained.

Cadillac intends to unveil the Elevated Velocity crossover at The Quail “motorsports gathering” event in Carmel, Calif., on Friday.

The crossover seats four with two seats in front and two in back and has an off-roading mode that makes it possible to explore two-tracks, cross desert terrain and navigate mountain roads in inclement weather without the bother of fueling stops.

A new Terra driving mode activates the Elevated Velocity’s air suspension for greater comfort, while 24-inch wheels improve its off-roading abilities.

The high-performance EV crossover also offers autonomous driving capability and retracts the steering wheel and the gas and brake pedals when in self-driving mode.

Cadillac designers intend for the Elevated Velocity to deliver peak performance on any terrain with the exhilaration of driving a hypercar.

In addition to the Terra and Elevate modes, drivers can choose an e-Velocity mode for “intense on-road driving” and a Sand Vision mode that improves visibility while driving in a sandstorm.

An Elements Defy mode helps to discourage the accumulation of dust, sand and dirt by vibrating the exterior to keep it clean.

Cadillac did not announce performance specs for the sleekly designed Elevated Velocity crossover or discuss its motor and drivetrain.

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.