Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Dodgers barely hung on to the lead yesterday, but behind an Alex Verdugo sliding catch, they successfully took three of four games against the Cubs. At 48-24, the team looks to pad their lead in the division with a four game series against the struggling San Francisco Giants. Kenta Maeda will start the series matched up against Tyler Beede.
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Giants
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Dodgers
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7:10 p.m.
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Los Angeles
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2B
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Panik |
LF
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Pederson | |
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CF
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Duggar |
CF
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Verdugo | |
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1B
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Sandoval |
1B
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Beaty | |
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LF
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Belt |
RF
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Bellinger | |
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C
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Vogt |
3B
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Muncy | |
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3B
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Longoria |
SS
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Taylor | |
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SS
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Crawford | 2B | Hernandez | |
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RF
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Pillar |
C
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Barnes | |
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P
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Beede (R) |
P
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Maeda (R) |
Joc Pederson is starting in left field against the right-handed Beede, and Justin Turner has the night off to rest. This moves Max Muncy over to third base, with Chris Taylor at short and Enrique Hernandez at second. Matt Beaty starts at first base and hits third tonight which is fun. I’m assuming Freese will be available when a left-handed pitcher comes in, but Beaty will start against the righty.
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Tyler Beede has had a rough 22 innings this season, but keep in mind he’s only thrown a total of 30 innings in the MLB. He’s not likely to carry an 8+ ERA forever. He currently has an 8.06 ERA and a 6.18 FIP which is less than ideal. He’s been successful striking out opposing batters with 26 strikeouts over 22.1 innings this season, but his issue is limiting walks. He’s allowed 17 walks and thrown five wild pitches over those 22 innings. He has a solid three pitch mix, featuring a fastball, changeup and curve. He sits 94-96 with his fastball that he throws roughly half the time, and he mixes in his changeup and curve at relatively equally rates. The Dodgers are tied with the Twins for the highest wRC+ against right-handed pitchers at 122, so this should present a challenge for Beede. Understandably, this is a great matchup for the Dodgers.
Kenta Maeda currently has a 3.89 ERA and a 4.23 FIP, both of which are above his career average. He’d been trending in the right direction recently, but his previous start against the Angels wasn’t pretty. He allowed five earned runs and two homers over 4.1 innings while walking three. Hopefully that’s just a blip and he’ll return to the run he was on prior to that start. Before that outing, Maeda featured a 2.27 ERA and a 2.96 FIP over his last seven starts and 39.2 innings. He had 44 strikeouts and only eight walks over that stretch, with a WHIP of 0.81. The Giants offense is 27th in the league in wRC+ at 80 overall, and also 27th in wRC+ (82) against right-handed pitchers. This is a good opportunity for Maeda to bounce back from his previous start.
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In other news, Ken Gurnick has all the updates.
Playing catch is as simple as it gets, but it’s good to see he’s made it to step one without any setbacks.
Kenley Jansen pitched the previous three games, so understandably he’s unavailable tonight … at least as a pitcher.
A.J. Pollock‘s eventual return will bring a much needed right-handed bat to the lineup. Hopefully his struggles to start the season were due to his elbow issues and he’s ready to produce moving forward. The Dodgers have been without their biggest offseason signing in Pollock, and their other signing in Joe Kelly single handedly costing the team a handful of games. Despite this, they’re 48-24 — a good baseball team.
First pitch is at 7:10 PT on SNLA & ESPN.
