Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Dodgers (16-9) return home from another disappointing road trip, going 2-3 against the Rangers and the Cubs. They took two of three from Texas, but dropped both games in Chicago despite scoring a total of 16 runs in two games. General sloppiness, poor pitching, poor defense, poor baserunning, and untimely hitting resulted in a pair of one-run losses. Bad stuff.
The team will look to move on from those performances and come into this three game series with improved fundamentals. The Pittsburgh Pirates (10-16) are coming off a series win against the Angels and will look to carry some momentum up the I-5. This matchup is an early duel between two Cy Young hopefuls with Yoshinobu Yamamoto squaring off against the Pirates’ phenom, Paul Skenes.
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| 7:10 P.M. | Los Angeles | ||
| CF | Cruz (L) | DH | Ohtani (L) |
| RF | Reynolds (S) | SS | Betts |
| DH | McCutchen | 1B | Freeman (L) |
| 1B | Valdez (L) | RF | T. Hernández |
| 3B | Hayes | 2B | Edman (S) |
| LF | Pham | C | Smith |
| 2B | Frazier (L) | LF | Conforto (L) |
| SS | Kiner-Falefa | 3B | Muncy (L) |
| C | Davis | CF | Pages |
| P | Skenes (R) | P | Yamamoto (R) |
Oneil Cruz has been the best player for the Pirates this year, but he’s been anywhere from bad to atrocious in center field, with -1 Out Above Average, and -8 Defensive Runs Saved. He has been great on the bases and at the plate with a 141 wRC+, with his seven home runs and 11 stolen bases putting him on pace for a 30 HR/60 SB season. Joey Bart (130 wRC+), Andrew McCutchen (113 wRC+), and Enmanuel Valdez (103 wRC+) have all been good this year, but the rest of their offense is slightly below-average or worse. The Pirates 31 stolen bases are fourth in baseball, and with Will Smith behind the plate they’ll be slightly less inclined to run. They have six players with at least three stolen bases, but are led by the aforementioned Cruz with 11.
Here’s how they compare as a whole.
Feels like I’m writing the same thing about Andy Pages anytime I mention him. He’s had plenty of good and bad moments this year, oftentimes showcasing both in the same game in some capacity. His first 41 plate appearances were quite brutal with a .415 OPS and 36 wRC+ to pair with his baserunning and defensive miscues, but he’s turned the offense around lately. His previous 40 plate appearances, he’s slashing .243/.300/.568, good for a 140 wRC+. His 5.0% walk rate and 22.5% strikeout rate over that stretch are right in line with his results in 2024, so he seems to be figuring out the bat as of late. Just catch the ball and hit the cutoffs in the outfield please.
Long story short, Michael Conforto, Max Muncy, and Shohei Ohtani need to be better. We can expect the bench to be inconsistent and below-average offensively, but these starters need to be better. Conforto had six extra-base hits over his first eight games and has none over his last 14, while hitting just .133. Muncy has just a 57 wRC+ and .529 OPS on the year and is still looking for his first home run. Ohtani has been a bit of a black hole over his last five games, with three hits and nine strikeouts in that stretch. The strikeouts and plate discipline has been brutal, especially as the team just needed a couple timely hits or at-bats from him in recent games.
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Here’s how the two aces have fared, and their ranks among 90 qualified starting pitchers.
Skenes took the loss his last time out, allowing two runs on six hits and one walk over seven innings. The nature of being on a team like the Pirates is that two earned runs over seven innings can still earn you a loss. He’s had a couple mediocre outings for his expectations thus far, but has mostly looked excellent. By Game Score on FanGraphs, Skenes had two of his three worst outings last year against the Dodgers, with a 5.73 ERA against the Dodgers with 16 strikeouts in 11 innings, meaning he had a 1.62 ERA against the rest of the league.
He’s coming of a fantastic rookie campaign in which he won Rookie of the Year and placed third in the National League Cy Young voting. He’s off to a great start this season, albeit with the earned run average a bit higher than he’d prefer at this point. The strikeout rate has dropped from an elite rate to simply above-average thus far, although the whiffs are likely to return, and there’s also been progress made in other aspects of his game. As a whole, he’s allowing less hits than last year, a lower frequency of home runs, and is walking fewer batters. The ERA is a bit inflated due to some early noise in strand rate or left on base percentage. The league-average strands rate is 72.3%, and Skenes currently has the sixth lowest rate this year at 56.9%, after the second best rate in 2024 at 85.6%. Good pitchers naturally strand more runners, and Skenes is allowing less runners and less damage this year, so when everything levels out over the course of a larger sample size, it’s likely he improves upon his 4.3 fWAR, 5.9 bWAR 2024 campaign. His 2.00 FIP is lower than his 2.44 mark last season, his expected ERA of 2.06 is lower than 2.53 in 2024, while his SIERA and expected FIP are nearly identical.
Speaking of pitchers that are looking to improve upon great 2024 seasons, Yamamoto has been breaking out in his sophomore campaign, looking like one of the best pitchers in the world. Prior to his excellent outing against Texas, here’s what I had to say about Yamamoto.
Yamamoto had a great outing his last time out, allowing just two hits and one walk over six scoreless innings with nine strikeouts against a great Cubs’ lineup. He currently has a 14 inning scoreless streak going, dating back to his second start of the season against the Tigers. His stuff has been improved thus far, and it’s translating to results. He’s getting one more inch of ride on his four-seam fastball this year, two more inches of drop on his curveball, and three extra inches of arm-side run on his splitter. He’s also thrown 20 sinkers this season compared to 40 all of last season, throwing nine in his last outing, all against right-handed batters. It’s hard to say he’s “breaking out” as he was excellent last year, but his start to the year has been superb and it appears that he’s taking a step forward.
He’s improved even further now, as he held the Rangers to just five hits and no walks with ten strikeouts over seven innings last Friday night. It’s his second start with double-digit strikeouts this season, and he improved his scoreless streak to 21 consecutive innings. Simply put, he’s not allowing runs, he’s striking everyone out, and he’s pitching deeper into games. Stud.
Batters hitting .077 against the splitter with a staggering 51.4% whiff-rate will absolutely work.
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Yoendrys Gómez was acquired by the Dodgers to likely be a usable reliever for a little while.
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Good that Blake Snell‘s second MRI revealed that there was in fact, no structural damage. No timeline for return but you’d probably think a month out at the earliest.
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Always fun to see more prospect lists, and Eric Longenhagen does a great job.
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First pitch is at 7:10 PT on SNLA and MLB Network.
