Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
After an 11-9 defeat last night, the Dodgers (29-17) have dropped the first two games of this series against the Angels (19-25), and are simply looking to avoid the sweep this afternoon. The first loss was mainly on the offense, while the second loss was squarely on the pitching. With this iteration of the Angels, nine runs scored should result in a win every time, but the pitching staff couldn’t keep runs off the board. Clayton Kershaw labored in his return, Ben Casparius wasn’t as sharp as he normally is, Kirby Yates was bad and then got injured (or maybe inversely), Luis García was bad, and Alex Vesia continued his trend of giving up home runs. Tanner Scott looked fantastic which is great and will be needed with the state of this pen. Tony Gonsolin will look to continue his great start to the season while Yusei Kikuchi counters for the Angels.
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| 1:10 P.M. | Los Angeles | ||
| SS | Neto | DH | Ohtani (L) |
| 1B | Schanuel (L) | SS | Betts |
| 3B | Moncada (S) | C | Smith |
| LF | Ward | 1B | Freeman (L) |
| DH | Soler | RF | Pages |
| C | d’Arnaud | CF | Edman (S) |
| RF | Lugo | 3B | K. Hernández |
| 2B | Rengifo (S) | LF | Conforto (L) |
| CF | Paris | 2B | Rojas |
| P | Kikuchi (L) | P | Gonsolin (R) |
The Dodgers put up nine runs last night, but Shohei Ohtani‘s 0-6 performance did stand out, unfortunately. Freddie Freeman continued his unreal start to the season adding four singles, bumping his batting average up to .375, and OPS to 1.115. His .375 batting average is second only to Aaron Judge (.402), and clears the second highest average in the NL (Will Smith – .336) by nearly 40 points. His 202 wRC+ is sandwiched between Judge (244) and Ohtani (188) for the second best mark in the sport. Andy Pages added two hits including a three run homer, while Dalton Rushing was 2-5 with two important hits. Kiké Hernández reached base all five times last night, with two hits and three walks, including his seventh home run of the season. He’s been on fire as of late and bumped up his season wRC+ to 117, and OPS to .784. Providing immense value for the team when he’s in the game.
Tommy Edman returns and is starting in center field after missing nearly three weeks with his ankle injury. He had a 122 wRC+ and .818 OPS while playing elite defense prior to aggravating his ankle, so hopefully he maintains that production now that he’s healthy again.
The Angels entered this series with one of the worst offenses in the sport, and have proceeded to put up 17 runs in two games. Essentially everyone on the Angels had a good time at the plate yesterday, most notably Logan O’Hoppe with five runs batted in. He’ll have the day off as old friend Travis d’Arnaud gets the start behind the plate. Gonsolin and everyone that follows need to do a better job at keeping the Angels off the board. Hardly any teams have struggled to do so this year, so the Dodgers should be able to accomplish it at least once in a three game series.
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Here’s how Gonsolin and Kikuchi have fared.
Gonsolin earned his second win in three outings his last time out, going five scoreless innings allowing just three hits and two walks against the Diamondbacks. He was a bit wild for his standards, landing just 48 of his 84 pitches for strikes, but he’s getting results in addition to providing innings that the team so desperately needs. He’s doing essentially what he’s always done, which is just mixing and matching his four pitches to generate weak contact and limit runs. His Stuff+ of 94 is his highest mark since 2021, but still not what you’d expect to consistently generate a sub 3.5 ERA. There’s nothing super extraordinary about his stuff but he just somehow always gets results.
Kikuchi allowed two earned runs on seven hits and two walks over six innings his last time out, preventing two extra runs from scoring via his own throwing error. It was his fifth quality start of the year, off to a relatively solid start with the Angels. He has a career 4.52 ERA despite always looking as if he’s one tweak from being an All-Star. He inked a 3-year $63M deal with the Angels this offseason, which seemed like a good deal for all parties, and he’s been fine this year which is more or less what the Angels would expect. His potential has hardly been harnessed throughout his career and it’s unlikely that he finds something special with their pitching development history. Houston was the one stretch where he looked like a star, with a 2.70 ERA, 3.07 FIP, and a 0.93 WHIP over 60 innings last season after being acquired prior to the deadline. While there he had a 31.8% strikeout rate and 5.9% walk rate, both career bests.
Thus far with the Angels his strikeout rate is down, his walk rate is up, and his stuff is diminished. I hope he figures it out, but just the innings he provides are valuable, even if they’re just average moving forward.
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The Dodgers released Chris Taylor today in order to reactivate Edman from the Injured List. Performance wise it’s not necessarily surprising, but in the same capacity as the Austin Barnes DFA, it still is quite shocking to see such an iconic Dodger of this era be let go.
Max Muncy has had his struggles, but looks to be figuring things out over the last couple weeks. He’s now the longest tenured position player with Taylor and Barnes gone, although Kiké made his Dodger debut back in 2015. He played two and a half seasons with Boston in between his Dodger tenures, so it’s not consecutive and doesn’t hit the above parameters. Naturally Kershaw is the longest tenured Dodger by quite some margin, but this was referring only to position players.
Reliever Lou Trivino was called up in order to help provide innings out of the bullpen.
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First pitch is at 1:10 PT on SNLA.
