Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Dodgers won convincingly last night by a score of 8-2, with an all around team effort despite just five hits. Yoshinobu Yamamoto cruised through eight innings allowing two runs on two solo home runs. He threw 73 of his 97 pitches for strikes and generated 17 whiffs. The offense put up eight runs on five hits and five walks, most prominently featuring a Max Muncy grand slam and Gavin Lux hitting his first home run of the season. Gavin Stone will take the mound today in the series finale up against the left-handed Ryan Weathers.
 |
 |
||
|---|---|---|---|
| 12:10 P.M. | Los Angeles | ||
| CF | Chisholm Jr. (L) | SS | Betts |
| DH | De La Cruz | DH | Ohtani (L) |
| 3B | Burger | 1B | Freeman (L) |
| 1B | Bell (S) | RF | Hernández, T. |
| RF | Sanchez (L) | LF | Hernández, K. |
| LF | Gordon (L) | 3B | Muncy (L) |
| SS | Bruján (S) | CF | Pages |
| C | Fortes | 2B | Rojas |
| 2B | Lopez | C | Barnes |
| P | Weathers (L) | P | Stone (R) |
The lineup switches around a bit for the day game after five consecutive games. Max Muncy drops down to sixth against the left-handed Weathers despite being red hot, with Teoscar Hernández and Kiké Hernández batting fourth and fifth respectively. Muncy is the only lefty in the lineup outside of the two plug and play stars in Freddie Freeman and Shohei Ohtani. It’s interesting to see Chris Taylor not get the start today, as Weathers isn’t a particularly tough matchup for right-handed batters, so that’s a bit rough. There’s only a couple weeks left before Jason Heyward is ready and some decisions will have to be made.
The Marlins will run out a very similar lineup as yesterday with a few minor tweaks. Nick Fortes and Otto Lopez will start in place of Christian Bethancourt and Tim Anderson.
——
Here’s how the two young starters matchup early this season.
Weathers took his third loss of the year in his last outing, allowing three runs on five hits and no walks over six innings with five strikeouts. Despite the loss it was his second quality start of the year, and he allowed no walks for the first time in almost a year. His changeup and sweeper have been good at generating whiffs, limiting damage, and finishing plate appearances. His issue has been that the fastball hasn’t done any of those things very well. The velocity is great sitting in the mid to upper 90’s, but it’s not creating whiffs and it gets hit hard (primarily by right-handed batters). He’s still a hard throwing lefty which is never easy to face, and you can only be so bad if you throw upper 90’s from the left side with four pitches.
He faced the Dodgers five times as a member of the Padres from 2021-23, totaling 19.1 innings with a 4.66 ERA. Last year he faced them once, allowing four earned runs on three hits and four walks over 5.2 innings.
Stone didn’t factor into the decision in his last outing against the Braves. He didn’t get the win he deserved, but allowing one run on five hits and one walk over six innings against that Braves lineup is a big accomplishment. That’s a real test for a guy in good form and it’s important to see him have outings like that. He’s made four consecutive starts allowing two or fewer runs, with a 2.35 ERA over that stretch.
After surprisingly not throwing his changeup much over his last few starts, he turned that around and featured his second highest usage of the pitch this year. He generated his highest whiff rate on the pitch this season, with nine whiffs on sixteen swings and 30 changeups overall. He also threw just two cutters last outing after throwing at least ten in each of his prior four outings. It hasn’t been great as an individual pitch, but the value is how he can attack hitters, mix things up, and let his changeup rip.
——
New Pitch Alert! ⚾️🪝‼️ Yoshinobu Yamamoto (LAD) debuted a sinker last night, so his full repertoire is now SI / FF / FS / FC / SL / CUhttps://t.co/CHMN5YDy4l
— MLBPitchClass (@MLBPitchClass) May 8, 2024
Yamamoto now features six pitches, has been throwing the four-seamer higher in the zone, and missing in better spots. He also throws my favorite pitch in baseball — the strike. An easy, efficient eight innings provides so much more value than a five and dive starter, especially with an injured and shorthanded bullpen. He’s evolving and acclimating in front of our eyes and it’s great to watch.
——
First pitch is at 12:10 PT on SNLA.
