Baseball’s most dominant pitcher is only 20 years old. It’s been 17 innings since he last allowed so much as a baserunner. On April 10, he fired a perfect game with 19 strikeouts. In his next start, this past Sunday, he threw eight more perfect innings before his manager removed him from the game. Before you ask, no, he’s not on the Los Angeles Dodgers. He’s not on any MLB roster.
His name is Roki Sasaki, and he plays for the Chiba Lotte Marines in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball. At an age when many American hurlers are college juniors, Sasaki is flummoxing the second-best baseball league in the world with triple-digit fastballs and ferocious splitters.