Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Dodgers opened up the roadtrip with a successful series in Chicago. The White Sox only scored in one inning in the entire series, the first inning of the second game. They were shut out in both the first and last games of the series, headlined by Gavin Stone‘s complete game shutout on Wednesday. It gave the Dodgers their 50th win of the season and put them back on a 100-win pace exactly halfway through the season. Tonight, they open up a three-game set in San Francisco. The Giants were pushing .500 last week at 36-37, but dropped five in a row against the Cubs and Cardinals. The Cubs visited San Francisco this week and the Giants won the first three games of the series before dropping the finale in extras. This is the third series between the Dodgers and Giants this season and the second in the bay. The Dodgers swept the first series in LA in April and won two of three in San Francisco in May.
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| 7:15 P.M. | San Francisco | ||
| DH | Ohtani (L) | DH | Soler |
| C | Smith | 1B | Wade Jr. (L) |
| 1B | Freeman (L) | CF | Ramos |
| LF | T. Hernández | C | Bailey (S) |
| CF | Pages | 3B | Chapman |
| RF | Heyward (L) | LF | Conforto (L) |
| SS | Rojas | RF | Matos |
| 2B | Lux (L) | 2B | Wisely (L) |
| 3B | Biggio (L) | SS | Ahmed |
| P | Knack (R) | P | Webb (R) |
Landon Knack gets his sixth start of the season tonight. He remained in the rotation after an impressive start against the Angels last Friday, where he only allowed two hits and two walks over five shutout innings. While his run prevention has been good, his strikeout numbers haven’t quite translated from the Minors yet. He’d posted over a 24 percent strikeout rate in each of his three minor league seasons, but so far has only struck out 17.6 percent in the Majors. He only struck out two Angels last time out and hasn’t struck out more than five in any of his five starts. He’s given up six runs in his five starts and hasn’t allowed more than two in a game yet. Knack ditched his curveball in his start against the Angels and has yet to allow a hit on it this season despite it getting hit pretty hard. Four of the five curves that have been put in play off him have had exit velocities over 96 MPH.
While Knack makes his first start against the Giants tonight, the Dodgers face a familiar foe in Logan Webb. This is Webb’s 15th start against the Dodgers in his career, which is the most he’s started against any team (he’s faced the Rockies 15 times as well, but one of those was in relief). He has a 4.05 ERA in 73 1/3 innings against the Dodgers and has alternated between having good and bad seasons against them. Last season, Webb saw the Dodgers twice and allowed three runs over 13 innings. He’s faced the Dodgers twice already this season and has allowed five runs over 9 2/3 innings. All of those runs came in his start at Dodger Stadium, where he allowed the five in only 3 2/3. When they squared off in San Francisco, Webb threw six shutout and allowed three hits and three walks. Webb’s had an uncharacteristically rough June with a 4.09 ERA over five starts. He allowed four runs on nine hits last time out in St. Louis but matched his season-high with eight strikeouts. He’s struck out 30 batters so far this month with only four walks and has gone at least six innings in each of his five starts.
Webb throws a sinker 37.7 percent of the time and has the fourth-highest ground ball rate among qualified pitchers (56.5 percent). However, Baseball Savant has Webb with the fifth-worst hard-hit rate among pitchers at 50.2 percent. I’m not entirely sure how their numbers differ from Fangraphs’ hard-hit rate, but they have Webb’s hard-hit rate at only 30.2, 45th-worst in baseball. Savant really doesn’t seem to like the Giants, as Keaton Winn is one of the four pitchers with a worse hard-hit rate and only Camilo Doval has allowed a ball to be hit harder than Webb (max EV off Webb is 120.4 MPH by Oneil Cruz, who also hit one 116.3 off Webb). Webb also throws a changeup (35.1 percent of the time and to both sides of the plate) and sweeper (21.6 percent of the time) and has mixed in a four-seamer (4.7 percent) and cutter (0.9 percent).
No surprises in the Dodger lineup today. The Giants get LaMonte Wade Jr. back tonight after a hamstring injury kept him out for a month.
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Max Muncy joined the team in San Francisco to get some work in.
Max Muncy is here in San Francisco to be in front of the Dodgers’ hitting coaches as his rehab ramps up. He’s started taking swings in the cage and doing some infield work. Still obviously not an option until after the All-Star Break.
— Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) June 29, 2024
He took some swings and some infield work. His return isn’t imminent, but this seems like a positive step.
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First pitch is scheduled for 7:15 PM PT and will be shown on SportsNet LA.
