Rōki Sasaki: the 20-year-old tsunami survivor behind the greatest game ever pitched
There are no-hitters. There are perfect games. And there’s the sort of virtuosity that Rōki Sasaki managed to conjure for two and a half unforgettable hours on Sunday afternoon at the Zozo Marine Stadium outside Tokyo.
Sasaki, a right-handed flamethrower for the Chiba Lotte Marines of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, achieved one of his sport’s rarest feats when he retired the minimum 27 batters without allowing an opposing player to reach base in a 6-0 win over the Orix Buffaloes, racking up a recordtying 19 strikeouts in only 105 pitches. Even more remarkable: he’s still only 20 and grew up amid the wreckage of the 2011 tsunami after his house, and several family members, were swept away by the floodwaters.
It was only the 16th perfect game in NPB history and the first in 28 years, but somehow that manages to undersell the grade of Sasaki’s masterpiece. There’s sabermetric-backed reason to believe that Sunday’s silencing of the defending Pacific League champions may well be the greatest game ever pitched.
After coaxing a pair of groundouts to open the game, Sasaki whiffed twotime reigning Pacific League batting champion Masataka Yoshida for his first strikeout of the day. He then struck out the side in the second, third, fourth and fifth innings to set a record with 13 consecutive strikeouts, laying waste to the 64-year-old Japanese mark of nine. (No pitcher in Major League Baseball has ever fanned more than 10 in a row.)
Sasaki continued to breeze through the Orix lineup into the later innings, overpowering hitters with a fastball that averaged nearly 100mph while keeping them guessing with a devas
tating low-90s splitter that drops off the table right as it reaches home plate.
Every pitch called by catcher Kō Matsukawa, an 18-year-old fresh out of high school, the imperious Sasaki calmly whipped past the flailing Buffaloes. He struck out the side once more in the eighth and then, down to the last batter, Sasaki uncoiled his beanpole frame for the 105th and final time and fooled the reigning Pacific League home run king Yutaro Sugimoto with a diving forkball for his 19th strikeout, equalling the NPB single-game record and setting off a wild celebration near the pitcher’s mound.
“This is the greatest,” a beaming Sasaki told Japan’s Kyodo news agency in the aftermath. “Honestly, I wasn’t thinking about the possibility [of a perfect game]. I figured it would be OK if I gave up a hit, so I just pitched and put my trust in Matsukawa right until the end.”
It’s been some journey for Sasaki, whose father and grandparents were killed and house swept away in the Tōhoku tsunami that engulfed Japan’s north-east coast when he was in elementary school. It’s a tragedy that, understandably, has stayed with him.
“It’s been 11 years but I cannot easily erase the agony and sadness I felt at the time,” Sasaki said last month. “I’ve been able to dedicate myself to baseball thanks to the support I’ve had. I only have the sense of gratitude to those who supported me.”
Courted by scouts from at least 20 of Major League Baseball’s 30 teams during a headline-grabbing career at Ofunato High School, he opted to sign with the Marines, who selected him first overall in the October amateur draft ahead of the 2020 season. He didn’t make an appearance during his first year with the club while on “physical preparation” – a rarity for a No 1 pick that made him a target for critics – but went 3-2 with 68 strikeouts, 16 walks and a 2.27 earned run average in 11 appearances during his debut campaign last year. And now this: the first perfect game in NPB since Hiromi Makihara of the Yomiuri Giants on 18 May 1994.
His sudden rise to international fame after Sunday’s contest – Sasaki’s name (#ࠦʓ࿗س) was trending on Twitter globally for several hours in the aftermath – comes at a moment when Japanese players are breaking through in the US mainstream like seldom before. This week Shohei Ohtani, the two-way LA Angels star with the oncein-a-century skillset who captured last year’s AL Most Valuable Player honors, became the first baseball player in nearly two decades to appear on the cover of Time magazine. And Seiya Suzuki, the longtime Hiroshima Toyo Carp outfielder who joined the Chicago Cubs on a five-year, $85m contract in March, is off to a historically torrid start in one of America’s biggest markets.
Sasaki, who hails from the same Iwate Prefecture as Ohtani, will no doubt have US fans drooling in anticipation of whether he will follow suit. But thanks to the byzantine posting system in place between MLB and NPB, which effectively deters the world’s best players from coming to the US as soon as possible, they could be in for a long wait.
Japanese players who sign with NPB clubs must accrue nine years of professional experience before they can sign as international free agents on the open market. A caveat to the system would allow Sasaki to come over as many as three years sooner, but he won’t be able to maximize his earnings until he turns 25 or finishes his sixth season in Japan. Bottom line: unless he’s willing to play for under fair market value, and that’s presuming the Marines oblige his request to be posted early, it’s unlikely his Major League Baseball debut will happen before 2027.
But while MLB fans are left to daydream about the future, Sasaki is focused on what he can produce now.
“The reality is slowly starting to sink in. I spent last night immersing myself in the experience,” he said on Monday. “That mark in history will always stand. A player is expected to perform throughout the season so I’m shifting gears and moving on.”