Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Dodgers (40-23) are coming off of a series split with the Arizona Diamondbacks (33-29), losing the final game of the series via a Ketel Marte walkoff homer last night in the desert. Justin Wrobleski was great once again, providing six scoreless innings and lowering his season ERA to 2.62, but the entirety of the bullpen was underwhelming at best. Kyle Hurt had poor command but managed a scoreless seventh inning, before Will Klein allowed two earned runs while recording just one out, one of the runs coming via an Alex Vesia meatball to Geraldo Perdomo, scoring one of his inherited runners. Tanner Scott actually looked solid last night before allowing the game-winning home run to Marte. In a vacuum the pitch wasn’t terrible, as a fastball low and in from Scott is usually an effective pitch, but Marte is simply the best hitting second baseman in the game and it was exactly what he was looking for. It happens. Tonight the Dodgers will look to bounce back against the Angels (24-39) who share the worst record in the sport with only the Colorado Rockies. The Dodgers were responsible for three of those losses a few weeks back, sweeping the three-game series in Anaheim in the middle of May. Roki Sasaki will look to build upon his recent success, while Reid Detmers looks to get the Angels back on track.
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| 7:10 P.M. | Los Angeles | ||
| SS | Neto | DH | Ohtani (L) |
| CF | Trout | CF | Pages |
| LF | Meckler (L) | 1B | Freeman (L) |
| DH | Soler | SS | Betts |
| 1B | Grissom | RF | Tucker (L) |
| RF | Adell | C | Smith |
| 3B | Walton (L) | LF | Call |
| 2B | Peraza | 2B | Rojas |
| C | O’Hoppe | 3B | Espinal |
| P | Detmers (L) | P | Sasaki (R) |
After having the day off in the series finale against the Diamondbacks, Shohei Ohtani is back at the top of the lineup. Over his last twenty games, dating back to May 12 and spanning 90 plate appearances, he is slashing an outrageous .438/.533/.753, good for a 253 wRC+. He has eleven multi-hit games during this stretch, and an 18 game on-base streak. His OPS bottomed out at .767 with a .233 batting average, and less than a month later has his OPS back to .941 and his batting average at .301. His 161 wRC+ is tied with Juan Soto for third in baseball, his OPS (.941) is fifth, his on-base percentage (.420) is third and a career-best mark, and he’s now only the 13th player with a batting average above .300.
He also has a 0.74 ERA through 61.0 innings, having allowed just five earned runs all season. Just an absolutely ridiculous baseball player and that is likely selling him short.
Anyway, Alex Call is in left field against the left-handed Detmers while Ryan Ward has the day off. Miguel Rojas starts at second base over Alex Freeland, and Santiago Espinal starts at third base over Max Muncy who is slated to start tomorrow after recovering from his collision with Ildemaro Vargas last night.
The Angels don’t particularly have a strong offense, with just a .679 OPS and an 89 wRC+ since the beginning of May. Mike Trout (.890 OPS), Oswald Peraza (.802), and Zach Neto (.766), are all hitting well, but they’re getting next to nothing from anyone else. Wade Meckler has a 1.060 OPS in 38 plate appearances after a .975 OPS in AA this season.
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Here’s how Roki and Detmers have fared thus far.
Detmers is a weird one because I feel like every single time I watch him, he looks like he could be among the best left-handed starters in the league, yet you look at his career numbers and he’s logged over 500 innings with a 4.75 ERA. Once again I feel that this is the season the 26 year-old breaks out, but his 4.63 ERA is simply right in line with what he’s always done. His FIP (2.99), expected ERA (2.93), and SIERA (3.31) all border on elite due to his ability to get strikeouts while limiting walks and home runs. He’s allowed just six home runs this season with 82 strikeouts to 22 walks in 68 innings, but has struggled with consistently doing those things throughout the entirety of a start.
He has just one scoreless outing this season, coming back in early April against the Mariners, but has flashed his potential a few times already. He allowed just one earned run across seven innings with nine strikeouts on the road against the Yankees in his fourth start of the year, and just two starts ago logged a career-high 14 strikeouts in a one run dominant outing against the Rangers. The start before that, he allowed eight runs against the Athletics, highlighting his consistency issues. He’s still very young, and it feels like a better organization would help him have more of those dominant outings, and less of the awful ones. Could get either version tonight.
Here’s what I had to say about Roki prior to his last outing against the Phillies.
Sasaki has made four starts in May prior to tonight’s outing, and he’s been very solid this entire month, with a 3.52 ERA, 3.28 FIP, 1.04 WHIP, and 21 strikeouts to just five walks in 23.0 innings. The walks are significantly down, the strikeouts are up, and the home runs are drastically down with just two allowed this month. He’s been very solid and reliable this month, something that marks a huge improvement for him. The difference maker has been reintroducing his hard splitter with consistent movement, and slowly decreasing the usage of his mid-80’s “forkball”. He almost completely shelved the fork his last time out in favor of the new splitter, throwing just one fork compared to 24 splitters. The splitter has predictable movement downward and arm side movement that he can actually command and control, compared to the fork that moves like a knuckleball at times. That’s great for inducing a whiff when you need one, but bad for actually establishing it as a pitch in the strike zone.
He’s logged wins in back-to-back outings, most recently allowing two earned runs over five innings against the Brewers after allowing just one run over seven innings against the Angels. He’ll look to continue his recent run of success against the Phillies who have just a .687 OPS and a 91 wRC+ against right-handed pitching this season.
Sasaki did just that, allowing just one run across 5.1 innings on three hits, one walk, and with seven strikeouts. He racked up a total of 18 whiffs including eight on the four-seamer which was up a tick and a half, sitting at 98.5 mph while touching triple digits more than once. He started throwing his harder splitter on April 25 against the Cubs, and since then has a 3.78 ERA with 33 strikeouts to just seven walks across 33.1 innings pitched. He had a 3.18 ERA across five starts in May, including his best career outing which came against the Angels, where he threw seven innings of one-run ball with eight strikeouts and no walks. He’s been great recently, and will look to replicate that outing he had against the same Anaheim team a few weeks ago.
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In other news,
Mike Sirota is quickly becoming one of the best prospects in the entire sport.
The team can handle the loss of Blake Snell and is expecting him to miss a good chunk of the season, but it is good to see that he has started his throwing progression.
Check out some prospect talk from Jared earlier.
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First pitch is at 7:10 PT on SNLA.
