The San Diego Padres enjoyed a comfortable 7-1 victory at Petco Park to take game one of their series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

In a fun pitching battle that saw Walker Buehler make Sasaki in more ways than one.

Buehler improved to 5-3 on the year as he struck out five, allowing just one run on three hits in 5.1 innings. As for Sasaki, he tied his career high by walking five batters in just four innings of work.

Sasaki threw 81 pitches, seven more than Buehler who made it four outs deeper in the series opener. In total, Sasaki only struck out two batters, allowing three earned runs on three hits.

Los Angeles isn't necessarily in danger of going anywhere. They remain first place in the National League West, though now the lead has fallen to eight games.

They still have the best record in all of baseball (52-30), for now, but they know starts like these add up quickly and for a team who was so comfortable with their starting rotation, they may need to start rethinking things.

"Today’s game, I really struggled to throw strikes," Sasaki said after the loss through his interpreter, according to MLB.com. "There’s a lot of things I need to work on, and I need to go over that. I’m not going to have it every time out, so that’s something I have to improve.

"And, also the game plan. I was able to execute some of the pitches, but some of the pitches I couldn’t, so that’s something I have to go through before next start."

Walking three of the first five batters is never ideal, especially in a rivalry game where Sasaki once again proved the lights may have been too bright. If that's the case here in late June, one can only imagine what the outcome will be in October.

"Sometimes, certain pitchers, if they’re out of whack a little bit, they can’t really do what they’re accustomed to doing or wanting to do. So I think Roki is a little bit like that," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.

"But at the end of the day, even if you don’t feel great, you still gotta go out there and make pitches and not walk guys. That’s just the bottom line. That’s the big leagues.”

Roberts added, "I know that there's confidence in there. But when you feel good and you don't feel good mechanically and can't execute pitches, yeah, then the results are walks, and you know, [0-2] homers, things like that. But yeah, I do think that we can kind of tackle the mechanic things that he's probably looking for right now."

In his last three starts, Sasaki sports an 8.36 ERA. He hasn't gone a full six innings in any of those games, and his ERA has skyrocketed from 4.03 to 4.88.

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