Roki Sasaki is broken — and it won’t be an easy Dodgers fix

What began as a straightforward developmental project has become infinitely more complicated.

Now that Roki Sasaki has been torn down, the Dodgers have to rebuild him.

How they do that, or whether that’s even possible, is anyone’s guess, but this is what the Dodgers unknowingly signed up for when they beat out 29 other major league teams for the Japanese fireballer’s signature.

Because Sasaki is broken.

He doesn’t know why he can’t throw strikes. He doesn’t know if he will be able to do so by the time he makes his first regular-season start next week.

An exhibition season in which he registered a 15.58 ERA has shaken his confidence to where he sounds open to spending time in the minor leagues.

“If that’s the judgement, if that’s better, I think that’s fine,” Sasaki said in Japanese.

In the wake of another disastrous start in the Freeway Series on Monday night, Sasaki didn’t sound as if he could be repaired overnight. By the looks of it, the 24-year-old right-hander will have to go back to square one, and the Dodgers might have to invest years in him before he does anything for them at the major-league level.

The magnitude of what he was up against started to dawn on him in the wake of his start against the Angels. Failing to record a single out in the first inning, he dropped any pretense about spring training results being entirely meaningless.

Pitchers are permitted to re-enter exhibition games, and Sasaki was sent back to the mound in the second inning. He pitched into the fourth inning, but nothing about his performance inspired optimism.

Sasaki walked six batters in two-plus innings. He opened each of the four innings he started with a walk or hit-by-pitch.

Of the 66 pitches he delivered, only 32 were strikes.

A major league scout in attendance said Sasaki reminded him of Shintaro Fujinami, the former Japanese league standout who was considered Shohei Ohtani’s equal as a pitcher before he suddenly couldn’t locate his pitches.

As ugly as that was, manager Dave Roberts said Sasaki remained in line to start the Dodgers’ fourth game of the regular season, which will be against the Cleveland Guardians.

“I believe in him,” Roberts said. “I really do. I told him that in the dugout.”

But Roberts acknowledged including Sasaki in the rotation was also about figuring out what they have in him.

“That’s the big, big driver of that,” Roberts said.

The Dodgers aren’t alone in being uncertain of where Sasaki is on the developmental curve. Sasaki doesn’t seem to know either.

Sasaki was confounded by his lack of control, explaining that he wasn’t particularly wild when he was warming up in the bullpen before the game.

Was he overthinking?

“Part of it is that, but there are a lot of factors,” Sasaki said. “Technical elements are what change. I can perform the same way if I can understand what changes when there’s a batter in front of me. “

What did he think changed?

“If that was clearer, it would be easier,” he said.

The Dodgers encouraged Sasaki to expand his arsenal by adding a pitch that moves to his glove side, but he didn’t think that contributed to his command problems.

Asked about his current level of confidence, or lack thereof, Sasaki mentioned how he was holding his velocity better than he did last year. His fastball averaged 97.1 mph against the Angels.

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“But I think that how much of that I can unleash against batters will depend on not only the adjustments I make in practice but also how I pile up successful experiences in games,” he said. “I think that could be difficult.”

Where Sasaki starts the season doesn’t matter in the long run. At some point, he will end up in the minor leagues.

Once there, the job of the Dodgers will be to guide him back to where he was when he was at his best, as a 20- or 21-year-old dominating the Japanese league. Either that, or they will have to help him discover a new identity as a pitcher.

This couldn’t be what the Dodgers had in mind when they signed him before last season. Their visions of him winning a Cy Young Award, their comparisons of him to Paul Skenes, all of that feels remarkably distant now.

But if there was a positive development here, it was that Sasaki comprehended the reality of his situation. The first step in rectifying a problem is to admit there is a problem, and Sasaki has done that. The question now is whether the Dodgers can provide him with solutions.