Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Dodgers (50-31) beat the Rockies (18-62) rather convincingly last night by a score of 8-1 amidst a rain delay, but it was unnecessarily close for over half the game. Yoshinobu Yamamoto was on the mound and naturally received no run support while he was out there, going five scoreless innings with his team scoring immediately after he left the game. The Dodgers put up three runs in the sixth inning, two coming from an infield pop-up that was dropped by the Rockies, and four coming in the seventh inning via a Max Muncy grand slam. Chad’s recap covered it all. They’ve now won six consecutive series, but haven’t swept a team since the Marlins near the end of April. Clayton Kershaw will be on the mound looking for his fourth consecutive win, while Austin Gomber will make his third start of the year for Colorado. Gomber is looking for his first win of 2025, pitching for the worst team in baseball, up against the Dodgers who are tied for the best record in the sport. The odds aren’t in his favor, but it’s baseball and it’s Coors Field, both unpredictable.
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| 5:40 PM | Denver | ||
| DH | Ohtani (L) | RF | T. Freeman |
| SS | Betts | LF | Beck |
| C | Smith | 2B | Estrada |
| 1B | Freeman (L) | 1B | Toglia (S) |
| RF | T. Hernández | DH | Farmer |
| CF | Pages | CF | Doyle |
| 2B | Edman (S) | 3B | Arcia |
| LF | K. Hernández | C | Fulford |
| 3B | Rojas | SS | Ritter |
| P | Kershaw (L) | P | Gomber (L) |
The Dodgers are 9-2 over their last eleven games, despite Mookie Betts slashing .178/.229/.244, while Freddie Freeman is slashing .158/.238/.158. Despite those struggles, the team will keep things pretty standard at the top of the order, with Will Smith back behind the plate today. Freddie might be playing through too many injuries currently as he looks the worst of them all, but it’s also unlikely he was 100% when he was hitting .370. Hopefully these guys get it figured out. Kiké Hernández is in left field over Michael Conforto, while Miguel Rojas is at third base for Max Muncy. Both of those two lefties have been swinging it well as of late and are slated to face two lefties this weekend in Noah Cameron and Kris Bubic. Getting the day game off after a late night before catching a flight is probably a good call for those two.
Muncy has a 176 wRC+, 1.002 OPS, a slash line of .291/.419/.583 and a 34:31 BB:K ratio over nearly 50 games and 191 plate appearances since switching to prescription glasses. Conforto has two hits in each of the opening two games of this series, including a home run in both games.
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Here’s how Kershaw and Gomber compare. Kershaw’s stats are from this season, while Gomber’s are from 2024 as he’s just 9.2 innings into his 2025 campaign.
Here’s what I had to say about Kershaw prior to his previous outing against the Washington Nationals:
Kershaw’s season started shaky, with a five earned run outing against the Angels in which he didn’t appear particularly sharp at all. He’s shaken off some rust since then, with a 1.90 ERA, 2.98 FIP, and a 1.18 WHIP, with 18 strikeouts to seven walks over 23.2 innings. He’s averaging just 89.1 MPH on his four-seam fastball, 85.7 on his slider, and 71.9 on his curveball, and yet is somehow still getting results. A veteran Hall of Fame pitcher with nearly 3000 innings under his belt seemingly just knows how to get outs. He likely won’t ever demonstrate a level of overpowering dominance again, but he’s getting results and winning games.
His last time out he allowed three hits and a walk with five strikeouts over seven scoreless innings, a vintage performance against the Giants. Prior to that he threw five innings of one-run ball against the Cardinals, racking up seven strikeouts en route to his first victory of the year. He’s now allowed one run or less in three of his last four outings and is nearing closer to 3000 strikeouts. It’s very unlikely he reaches that mark tonight as he needs twelve more, but when he does he’ll become the 20th pitcher to reach that mark, and just the fourth left-hander to make it there.
It was a duel of the lefties his last time out, one at the top of his game in MacKenzie Gore, and one in the latter stages of his career in Kershaw. He wasn’t incredibly sharp as he was missing location a bit resulting in two solo home runs, one to Amed Rosario and one to Riley Adams, but limited the damage to just those two earned runs. He had four strikeouts over those five innings, bringing his strikeout total up to 2992, eight away from history. Hopefully he gets enough today to ensure that he lines up to reach 3000 next week at home against the White Sox.
Gomber started the year on the Injured List with left shoulder soreness, making his season debut on June 15 against the Braves. He made his return on the road, where he tossed five scoreless innings allowing just two hits and one walk with four strikeouts. He had a nightmarish outing his second time out however in a classic Coors Field game. He allowed nine earned runs on twelve hits and one walk over 4.2 innings without registering a strikeout against the Diamondbacks. He allowed six extra-base hits, including home runs to Ketel Marte, Eugenio Suarez and Ildemaro Vargas.
Since he first faced the Dodgers as a member of the Rockies in 2021, he’s made seven starts against them, with a 4.71 ERA, 6.21 FIP, and a 1.60 WHIP over 28.1 innings pitched. He has just 21 strikeouts to 16 walks over those outings, and will likely need to be much sharper today.
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I’m sure Will Klein will be back at some point this season as he’s just 25 years-old, has two option years remaining, and looks the part of a powerful late inning reliever if he has made improvements with his control and command. Meanwhile, Luis García is back, hopefully rejuvenated and ready to eat more innings.
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Makes sense for Shohei Ohtani‘s rehab timeline. Maybe we’ll see multiple innings this time out.
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First pitch is at 12:10 PT on SNLA.
