Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
Having faced off four two games in Minnesota all the way back on April 12 and 13, the Dodgers and Twins are set for two more in Los Angeles tonight and Wednesday.
Julio Urias starts for the Dodgers against Joe Ryan of the Twins, as Minnesota arrives in Los Angeles with a one-game lead on the Guardians and a 2.5-game advantage on the White Sox. Siting at 57-51, the Twins hold the worst record of the six division leaders with the 13th-best record in baseball. Entering the game off a loss to the Blue Jays on Sunday, one in which Rocco Baldelli was ejected following the umpires overturning a call in the 10th inning of the loss.
Minnesota is 7-7 since the All-Star break, and 10-14 since July 5th when they were 10 games over .500. The Dodgers (75-33) won both games earlier this season, first with a 7-2 victory through a rain delay and then 7-0 as Clayton Kershaw was perfect through 7 innings.
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| 7:10 PM | Los Angeles | ||
| DH | Buxton | RF | Betts |
| SS | Correa | SS | T. Turner |
| 2B | Polanco (S) | 1B | Freeman (L) |
| 1B | Miranda | C | Smith |
| 3B | Urshela | 3B | Muncy (L) |
| CF | Celestino | DH | J. Turner |
| RF | Kepler (L) | 2B | Lux (L) |
| C | Leon (S) | LF | Gallo (L) |
| LF | Gordon (L) | CF | Bellinger (L) |
| P | Ryan (R) | P | Urias (L) |
Welcome back to Justin Turner, who was activated off the IL following his stint with abdominal tightness. Having played just once since July 22, Turner hit .400/.485/.546/1.030 through 16 games in July with eight walks to nine strikeouts. You could take that stretch back to June 18 when he was hitting .206.278/.338/.616 and Turner’s up to .257/.332/.405/.738 with a 109 wRC+ on FanGraphs in the 27 games played since then.
Also back in the lineup for the Dodgers is Joey Gallo, who is now 2-for-10 with six strikeouts in four games with the Dodgers. Ryan doesn’t have a major split, .211 BA/.287 OBP/.391 SLG/.298 wOBA to lefties and a .219 BA/.280 OBP/.416 SLG/.303 wOBA to righties, but he does throw primarily fastballs (58.8%) and Gallo is… well it’s his second-worst pitch this in by run value and he’s outside the Top 300 in the league against it. Honestly, I don’t know but he’s going to need at-bats if the Dodgers are going to help him bounce back from his struggles this season and they lead the NL West by 16 games and the National League by five.
The rest of the order is what you should pretty much expect at this point, with Cody Bellinger coming off a two-home run game on Sunday and holding an OPS over 1.000 in the seven games since July 31. Yes that’s an incredibly small sample, but still something positive.
Mookie Betts (.476/.560/.1.000/1.560) and Will Smith (.389/.429/.556/.984) were also pretty hot in the past week.
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Unfortunately I’m a little shorter on time today, so here’s the basic breakdown of Urias and Ryan.
| 2022 | Urias (115 2/3innings) | Ryan (90 2/3 innings) |
| ERA | 2.57 (T-10th) | 3.67 (T-49th) |
| FIP | 3.64 (41st) | 4.21 (T-63rd) |
| K% | 23.8% (37th) | 23.9% (T-35th) |
| BB% | 5.2% (T-18th) | 6.7% (T-37th) |
| BAA | .211 (T-85th) | .215 (96th) |
| wOBA | .272 (78th) | .301 (178th) |
| Hard Hit% | 30.2% (27th) | 36.7% (T-143rd) |
Ryan held the Tigers to just three hits and one runs with nine strikeouts in 5 innings on Aug. 3, but that came one start after the Padres offense (which didn’t look that amazing this past weekend) hit him for 10 runs on eight hits and two walks in 4 2/3 innings. Ryan gave up five homers to the Padres, as Luke Voit, Ha-Seong Kim, Eric Hosmer, Manny Machado and Jorge Alfaro all connected for homers. One homer came on a change-up with two on sliders and four-seamers, with the 10 runs allowed easily the most against Ryan this season as he had allowed four in two other starts.
Meanwhile, Urias allowed seven hits in six scoreless innings against the Giants on Aug. 3, with a seven-inning outing in Coors with just two runs allowed on four hits. Urias has allowed just three runs in his past 18 innings, with 23 strikeouts to two walks during the four-game stretch.
And here’s the offenses they are up against, with both sides pretty close on much of this so far this season.
| 2022 | Dodgers | Twins |
| BA | .260 (3rd) | .251 (8th) |
| OBP | .336 (1st) | .321 (7th) |
| SLG | .446 (2nd) | .417 (8th) |
| wOBA | .339 (1st) | .323 (6th) |
| Hard Hit % | 42.0% (5th) | 42.6% (4th) |
| HR | 139 (7th) | 133 (8th) |
| SO | 889 (11th) | 877 (10th) |
| BB | 402 (2nd) | 353 (9th) |
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I think it was already announced during the day off and should have been obvious, but Miguel Vargas was sent back to Triple-A OKC to make room for Justin Turner.
And once again to run through the long list of injured Dodgers and where they are:
Dustin May is starting in OKC tonight for his fourth rehab start, Blake Masters Treinen and Brusdar Graterol threw a sim game before first pitch tonight and are headed to OKC to begin their rehab assignments on Friday, Yency Almonte‘s MRI came back clean and he’s throwing lightly today and Ryan Pepiot is in Los Angeles and the favorite to start tomorrow night against the Twins.
All of that info is courtesy of all the regular Dodgers reports on Twitter.
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First pitch is set for 7:10 p.m. on SportsNet LA and from what I can see, ESPN+ as well.
