I’ve written before that one of my favorite items to work on in the Star-Advertser is the Hawaii Baseball Report, which runs each Sunday during minor league baseball season and tracks the professional progress of players who went to high school or college in Hawaii.

Of course, one of the best things is seeing a player break out, and it’s even better when my degrees of separation from that player number considerably fewer than the theoretical maximum of six.

So, as much as I enjoyed watching Gerald Oda and his Honolulu squad romp through the field at the Little League World Series, my baseball highlight of August was watching Shane Sasaki, my son’s classmate at ‘Iolani, burn up the Carolina League.

How hot was Sasaki last month? The Charleston RiverDogs center fielder and leadoff hitter won back-to-back league player of the week awards as he hit .356 for the month. After entering August with just one homer this season and three in his two-plus pro seasons, Sasaki knocked five out, helping him also lead the Single-A Carolina League in slugging percentage.

Despite missing the last three games of the month after getting plunked in the hand on Aug. 27, Sasaki has not slowed down in September. He returned on the first and had multiple hits in each of his first four games back, going 9-for-17 with five runs scored and five RBIs.

In his return Thursday, he came up in the bottom of the 10th with his RiverDogs down a run to the Myrtle Beach Pelicans with two out and hit a two-run single for the walk-off 7-6 win. On Saturday, Sasaki hit two home runs to keep the RiverDogs in the game before they came from behind to win 7-5. On Sunday, he reached base five times — two hits and three walks — in six plate appearances with his 45th stolen base of the season in a 9-6 loss.

Sasaki has hit .529 since taking one off his hand, lifting his batting average to a league-best .329. With Astros farmhand Joey Loperfido 25 points back in second place, Sasaki’s batting title is all but assured. Loperfido was promoted to High A ball last month, so Sasaki would have to go 0-for-31 in the last week of the season to fall behind him. Sasaki also leads the league in on-base and slugging percentages.

Early struggles help

Success didn’t come easily for Sasaki. After being drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays in the third round of the 2019 draft, he only got in 44 at-bats down the stretch due to injuries. He struggled, batting only .182. The 2020 minor league seasons were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Sasaki headed to Australia to play for the Perth Heat, where he scuffled some more.

With the minor leagues returning to a full season in 2021, Sasaki examined his play and made some adjustments. He now appreciates that he didn’t hit the ground running as a pro.

“It was important in my career to struggle early on and to figure out things and try to make those adjustments quicker,” he said in a phone call last week, just before he returned from his hand injury.

The work bore fruit last year, as he batted .290 with 22 stolen bases — an area of his game that he and the Rays had been “fine-tuning” — in just 33 games as he dealt with injuries again.

Sasaki started this season much the same, hitting .289 with 26 steals in 41 games before a bout with COVID-19 followed by a shoulder impingement cost him three weeks.

He returned on June 21 and has taken his offense to the next level, batting .361. After getting his weight back up, he had the aforementioned power surge.

For the first time in his pro career, Sasaki feels like he has settled in.

“Just getting consistent at-bats kinda is what really helped me,” he said.

With a playoff spot on the line this week, Sasaki — whose rookie league squad won a title last season — is focused on the team finishing strong rather than awards and the batting title.

The RiverDogs lead the Carolina League South second-half standings by 3.5 games with six games left. They visit the second-place Columbia Fireflies for the remainder of their games and need two wins to set up a best-of-three playoff series next week against the first-half champion Pelicans for the right to play in the league championship series.

Once the playoffs are done, Sasaki plans to head back to Hawaii to train — the goal, he says, is “always try to be better than I was last year, than I was yesterday” — and to finally meet his family’s two new goldendoodles. He can reconnect a bit with ‘Iolani classmate Micah Yonamine, a catcher with the Single-A Clearwater Threshers in the Phillies organization. The two remain good friends, but Yonamine plays in the Florida State League, and Sasaki said the season is too busy to stay in touch.

The only player from Hawaii in the Carolina League is Baldwin graduate Anthony Hoopii-Tuionetoa, a pitcher for the Down East Wood Ducks, an affiliate of the Texas Rangers. The two touched bases when their teams met this season.

“It’s always nice to see another person from Hawaii,” Sasaki said. “You start talking like how you can talk back home.”