Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Dodgers (70-49) beat the Brewers (67-51) last night by a score of 5-2, their fourth consecutive win. Clayton Kershaw had his best outing of the year, going 5.2 innings allowing just one run and earning his first win of the season. Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani combined for all five runs batted in, and are now undefeated since Betts has returned. The team is now 7-2 in their last nine games, so it’s nice to see some positive results with Arizona and San Diego surging. They’ll look to keep things rolling tonight with Gavin Stone on the mound, up against the right-handed Colin Rea.
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| 5:10 P.M. | Milwaukee | ||
| DH | Ohtani (L) | 2B | Turang (L) |
| RF | Betts | LF | Chourio |
| 1B | Freeman (L) | C | Contreras |
| LF | T. Hernández | DH | Black (L) |
| 2B | Lux (L) | SS | Adames |
| C | Smith | CF | Mitchell (L) |
| SS | Rojas | 1B | Hoskins |
| 3B | K. Hernández | RF | Frelick (L) |
| CF | Pages | 3B | Ortiz |
| P | Stone (R) | P | Rea (R) |
Both teams will run out very similar lineups to the ones they put out yesterday. For the Dodgers, Andy Pages will start in center field over Kevin Kiermaier. The Brewers will start the left-handed Tyler Black over Gary Sánchez, as Black sat yesterday against the left-handed Kershaw. William Contreras did nearly all of the damage Milwuakee could muster yesterday, with their only two extra-base hits of the night. He hit two-run homer in the sixth inning off of Joe Kelly, allowing Kershaw’s baserunner to score, accounting for his only earned run. Stone will have to tread carefully around Contreras as he’s the most dangerous batter on the team.
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Here’s how Rea and Stone compare. Their rankings are among 80 starters with at least 110 innings pitched.
Stone allowed three runs on six hits and one walk over 4.2 innings with two strikeouts against the Phillies in his last outing. He started with a leadoff homer to Kyle Schwarber, but settled in to an extent after that, with three scoreless innings. He struggled in the fifth, giving up two hits early before being relieved by Alex Vesia. It was the second start in a row where Stone didn’t manage to make it through the fifth inning, and has allowed at least three runs in each of his last three outings. He’s pitched into the sixth inning just once over the last month and a half. He has a 6.91 ERA over his last six starts, with 21 earned runs in 27.1 innings pitched, with just 19 strikeouts to seven walks. He’s allowed at least one home run in each of those six starts, for a total of eight. Just a really bad stretch, and he’ll just be looking to finally get back on track.
Rea is having a great year, earning his tenth win of the season his last time out. He allowed just five hits and a walk over seven scoreless innings against the Braves, with nine strikeouts. It was a dominant performance from a guy who doesn’t really have the matching track record, but you can’t argue with a 3.38 ERA this far into the year. His 4.25 FIP, 4.31 xFIP, 4.37 SIERA, and 4.75 xERA all indicate he’s due for regression, but regardless of when or if that regression happens, his first 120 innings of the year have been great. He has a deep arsenal with a true six-pitch mix, all working off his low-90’s sinker. He adds in a four-seamer so his hard stuff doesn’t always look the same, going to an upper-80’s cutter, and a low 80’s sweeper after that. He’ll also mix in a mid-80’s splitter and an upper-70’s curve to round things out.
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River Ryan is undergoing Tommy John surgery and will hopefully be back and ready to go for the 2026 season. It sucks. He was shooting up prospect rankings, reaching and even surpassing marks that Bobby Miller hit prior to his promotion last year. He looked like the real deal in his handful of starts, and like he’d be a weapon in the postseason.
On a more positive note, Yoshinobu Yamamoto is continuing to trend in the right direction.
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Looks like we might see Justin Wrobleski again this coming Friday.
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First pitch is at 5:10 p.m. on SNLA and TBS.
