The Emergence of the Reiwa Monster
Roki Sasaki was drafted first overall by the Chiba Lotte Marines in 2019 from Ofunato High School in Iwate, where he threw 163 km/h as a senior. The Marines developed him cautiously: no first-team appearances in year one, then 11 games in 2021 with a 2.27 ERA. His 160+ km/h fastball and devastating forkball overwhelmed NPB hitters, setting the stage for his historic 2022 season.
April 10, 2022 - The Perfect Game
At ZOZO Marine Stadium against the Orix Buffaloes, Sasaki was untouchable from the first pitch. He struck out 13 consecutive batters from the 3rd through 7th innings, shattering the previous NPB record of 9. He retired all 27 batters for NPB's 16th perfect game and first in 28 years, with 19 strikeouts on just 105 pitches. At 20 years and 5 months, he became the youngest pitcher to throw a perfect game in NPB history.
Eight More Perfect Innings and the Manager's Call
Remarkably, Sasaki carried a perfect game through 8 innings the following week against the Fighters before manager Tadahito Iguchi pulled him on pitch count limits. The decision sparked intense debate between those wanting to witness history and those supporting the protection of a 20-year-old arm. Sasaki's combined 17 consecutive no-hit, no-baserunner innings across two starts was unprecedented.
The MLB Challenge
Sasaki posted to MLB after 2024 and signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2025, accepting bonus pool limitations to pursue his dream. In his first year, 2025, he made eight starts before a long absence with right-shoulder impingement, then returned in September, moved to the bullpen in the postseason - closing games through the NL playoff rounds - and helped the Dodgers, alongside Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, repeat as World Series champions (as of August 2026). In four NPB seasons, he went 29-15 with a 2.10 ERA, leaving behind the indelible records of a perfect game and 13 consecutive strikeouts.
Technical Analysis of 13 Consecutive Strikeouts
What sustained Sasaki's 13 consecutive strikeouts was a sequencing approach that forced hitters into a two-pitch guessing game between forkball and fastball. The forkball reads as a strike until after hitters commit to their swing, then dives so sharply that even making contact is difficult. The fastball, at around 160 km/h with a riding trajectory that seems to lose little speed on the way to the plate, arrived before hitters could adjust. Denied any pitch to sit on, Orix's batters had no answer, and the result was an otherworldly run of 13 straight strikeouts.
Position Within the Lineage of NPB Perfect Games
NPB's first perfect game was thrown by Hideo Fujimoto in 1950, making Sasaki the 16th to achieve the feat. The gap between Hiromi Makihara's 1994 perfect game and Sasaki's in 2022 spanned 28 years, during which NPB experienced a hitter-friendly era with juiced balls and smaller parks raising the difficulty. The previous youngest achiever was Gentaro Shimada, aged 21 when he did it in 1960; Sasaki broke the mark at 20 years and 5 months. By franchise, Kokutetsu pitchers lead with three perfect games (Koreyoshi Miyaji, Masaichi Kaneda, and Yoshimi Moritaki), while Yomiuri has two (Fujimoto and Hiromi Makihara in 1994). Pacific League pitchers, Sasaki included, account for eight. His 19 strikeouts stand out not only as a perfect game record but as an exceptional nine-inning performance, and his combination of overwhelming strikeout rate and pinpoint control places his perfect game among the greatest in NPB history.
The Ofunato High School Era and Pitcher Protection Debate
An essential chapter in Sasaki's story is his Ofunato High School years. In the 2019 summer Iwate prefecture final, coach Yohei Kokubo chose not to pitch Sasaki, and the team lost to Hanamaki Higashi. This decision challenged Japan's high school baseball culture of pitcher overuse. Examples of such culture include Daisuke Matsuzaka throwing over 250 pitches total in the 1998 summer Koshien for Yokohama High, and Masahiro Tanaka and Yuki Saito pitching consecutive games in the 2006 summer replayed final between Komadai Tomakomai and Waseda Jitsugyo. Many now view Kokubo's decision as vindicated by Sasaki's professional development. This incident catalyzed the formal introduction of a 500-pitch weekly limit for high school baseball starting spring 2020, institutionalizing pitcher protection as policy.