Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Dodgers (15-11) beat the Washington Nationals (10-13) last night by a score of 11-2, behind an offensive explosion and a quality start from Landon Knack. The offense put up eleven runs on an impressive twenty hits. They lost to the Nationals 2-0 a week prior against the same starting pitcher as last night, Jake Irvin, so the offense will be looking for some consistency before heading to Toronto (13-12). Yoshinobu Yamamoto will be on the mound today up against the left-handed MacKenzie Gore.
Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, and Teoscar Hernández have played in all 26 games this year, and that’ll continue today. It’s a travel day and a matchup against a tough lefty in Gore, so it makes sense that the lineup has significant changes today. Some of the left-handed bats and Will Smith are likely available off the bench if need be.
Old friend Keibert Ruiz is back in the lineup for the Nationals after missing nearly three weeks due to illness.
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Here’s how Yamamoto and Gore have performed this year.
Yamamoto had a fine outing last time out against the Mets, allowing three earned runs on seven hits and one walk over six innings with nine strikeouts. He had a disastrous one inning MLB debut back in Korea against the Padres, but has really settled in pretty well since then. He’s had his issues and still has more adjustments to be made, but excluding that outing his numbers are quite impressive. His ERA drops down to 2.57, with a 2.92 FIP, and 0.95 WHIP. His strikeout rate is an elite 33.3% clip paired with an also elite 4.8% walk rate, due to 28 strikeouts and just four walks over 21 innings pitched. The primary issue is the four-seam fastball sitting in the low and middle parts of the zone, while it should play best up in the zone and above.
Gore took his first loss of the year in his last outing, giving up three runs on seven hits and a walk over four innings against the Astros. It’s early in the year, but Gore has finally seemed to look the part of the top pitching prospect he was back in 2022 when the Padres traded him in the Juan Soto deal. His command looks refined, walking batters at a league average rate now after having issues with that in the past. The velocity is now up two ticks from last year, sitting in the upper 90’s. His fastball is excellent, and he uses a low 80’s curve and low 90’s slider as his primary breaking balls. He mixes in a mid 80’s changeup solely to right-handed batters, so the team will likely see an increased usage in that pitch today.
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This is a good look at some issues plaguing Yamamoto, and I believe there should be something on our site too over the next few weeks based on current and future performance.
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Players’ Weekend wasn’t initially planned for this year, but it looks like it will in fact be part of the schedule once again.
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First pitch is at 1:05 PT on SNLA and MLB Network.
