Roki Sasaki's spring training debut with Dodgers will have Blue Jays fans feeling regretful

It took Roki Sasaki all of one spring training pitch to put the baseball world on notice — and for the Blue Jays to get a reminder on what they missed out on.

Sasaki made his spring training debut for the Dodgers last night and dazzled with three scoreless innings in relief of Yoshinobu Yamamoto. He introduced himself with a 99.2 mph fastball on his first pitch.

"That's the best we've seen him," manager Dave Roberts told reporters, per MLB.com's Sonja Chen. "And you would expect that, given he's now really in compete mode, the adrenaline is real. We haven't seen 99 all spring."

And while it's just spring training, Sasaki seems primed to spend this season dominating MLB hitters after spending the past four seasons destroying Nippon Professional Baseball hitters.

And every strikeout and clean inning pitched by Sasaki this season will serve as a reminder to Blue Jays fans of what could have been.

Roki Sasaki dazzles in spring debut for Dodgers

The 23-year-old Sasaki was posted in the offseason, and, since he was under 25, needed to be signed using international pool money. After missing out on Juan Soto, the Blue Jays pivoted hard to Sasaki despite reports that that he wanted to play on the West Coast.

After a round of meetings, the Blue Jays were reported as a finalist along with the Dodgers and Padres. That reporting solidified Toronto as a destination for Sasaki while also giving Blue Jays fans optimism that Toronto could finally nab a big name free agent.

That optimism reached a fever pitch the morning of Jan. 17 when the Blue Jays essentially paid $13.8 million over the next two years (the cost of Myles Straw's contract) to get $2 million of international bonus pool money to help sweeten the deal for Sasaki.

Less than 24 hours after making that trade, Sasaki was a Dodger.

While it was always going to be an uphill battle to acquire Sasaki thanks to the built in advantages any West Coast team had, it seemed as if his interest in Toronto was legitimate enough for Blue Jays fans to dream about a rotation comprised of Sasaki, José Berríos, Kevin Gausman, Bowden Francis, and Chris Bassitt.

And although Toronto's front office did a fine job in the aftermath of Sasaki's spurning by adding Anthony Santander and Max Scherzer, Sasaki's a generational talent and his spring debut showed it.

He averaged 98 mph on his four-seamer, 85.8 mph on his splitter and 83.3 mph on his slider and was able to generate seven whiffs with his splitter.

His fastball velocity was one mile per hour faster than it was last year.

"It was a combination of [adrenaline and improved mechanics]," Sasaki said after the game. "I really worked hard in the lab, dug into the mechanical aspect of my form and things I do well and things I wasn’t doing well."

Right now, the main conversation around the Blue Jays' rotation is if Gausman and Bassitt can squeeze a little more magic out of their arms.

On the other side of the country, Sasaki's arm is producing magic no one's ever seen before.

But no move is made in a vacuum. Maybe if the Blue Jays got Sasaki they wouldn't have got Santander and Scherzer, both of whom are good players and should help the Blue Jays win some games this year.

Sasaki would have helped the team off the field as well. He would have been able to generate new ad and marketing opportunities in Japan, and also could have served as the new face of the team if/when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. leaves in a trade or free agency.

But instead of building a future around Sasaki, the Blue Jays will instead get their first chance to see the phenom in August when they make their trip to Dodger Stadium in August.