Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
Finally, the Dodgers didn’t waste yet another brilliant Zack Greinke start and they won by a score of 2-0, escaping Miami with a series win.
Greinke was just his usual dominant self today, going 7-2/3 scoreless innings, striking out six batters and walking one. After today’s outing, his ERA is down to 1.58. That isn’t quite backed up by a 2.85 FIP and 3.27 xFIP, and his BABIP won’t stay this low forever, but it’s still hard to argue that he hasn’t had an amazing year thus far. His peripherals are still mostly in line with the rest of his Dodger career, which has been great.
Greinke kept the Marlins guessing and generated a lot of weak contact (something he generally has not been good at through his career, but has improved since coming to LA), and helped his cause with several great defensive plays. If the weak contact continues, combined with Greinke’s defense and solid control of the running game (Dee Gordon was caught stealing against him today), Greinke should beat his FIP by a bit. The opt-out is looming, but Greinke is doing his best to make it hard to imagine him as anything but a Dodger.
On offense, at first it looked like the Dodgers would fail to score with Greinke pitching for about the millionth time in the past two months. It’s not that the bats were struggling, as they were constantly threatening starter Jose Urena. Urena pitched five innings while walking four and striking out four. However, it took an errant throw by Adeiny Hechavarria that spoiled an inning-ending double play for the Dodgers to push across their first run.
The Dodger offense tacked on a second run in the seventh inning against Mike Dunn, on a Howie Kendrick single (he also had another single and a walk) and an Adrian Gonzalez double. Yasiel Puig was intentionally walked and Yasmani Grandal was unintentionally walked, but Carter Capps was brought in to put out the fire and Scott Van Slyke missed a grand slam by about 15 feet, flying out to deep right. The final score may be presented to say that the offense was hurting, but they really weren’t. The Dodgers had at least one baserunner in every inning and if balls fell differently the offense could have easily scored five or more runs. It was just one of those frustrating days, but Greinke bailed them out.
Kenley Jansen struck out two batters and didn’t allow a walk. Jansen actually came close to a walk, as Marcell Ozuna worked a 3-2 count, but then this happened:
He shook off Grandal before, too. He wanted to throw that slider, and it worked perfectly. I love the pitch and think Kenley should throw it more, so that was fun. Jansen has now struck out 26 batters this season without allowing a single free pass.
After salvaging a series win in Miami, the Dodgers travel to Arizona to face the Diamondbacks tomorrow evening. Mike Bolsinger will face off against his former team, and the Dodgers will face off against their former prospect Allen Webster at 6:40PM PDT.
