Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Dodgers squeaked by with a series win over the Giants yesterday afternoon. As we all thought in March, Clayton Kershaw had a solid return from his shoulder surgery and Nick Ahmed hit the game winning homer before Brent Honeywell Jr. recorded the save. The win closed out a 6-1 homestand out of the break and kept the Dodgers 7.5 games up in the NL West.
Today, the open up a weekend series in Houston against everyone’s favorite squad. The AL West failed to bury the Astros, who started the season 12-24 and lost like an entire pitching staff with injuries. They worked their way up to second place in the division on June 18 at 33-40, but were a season-high 10 games back of the Mariners at that point. The two teams have been going in opposite directions in the last month, as Houston is 20-9 since then and Seattle is 9-20. Houston’s gone 3-3 in their six games since the All-Star game, as they took two of three against the Mariners before dropping two of three in Oakland. Still, Houston is in sole possession of first for the second time this season (the other time being after beating Seattle last Saturday) heading into their series with the Dodgers. The two teams played at Dodger Stadium last June and the Dodgers took two of three. All three games were decided by a run, with the Dodgers taking the first two 3-2 and 8-7 before falling in extras in the finale 6-5.
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| 5:10 P.M. | Houston | ||
| DH | Ohtani (L) | 2B | Altuve |
| C | Smith | 3B | Bregman |
| RF | T. Hernández | DH | Alvarez (L) |
| CF | Pages | C | Diaz |
| LF | Vargas | SS | Peña |
| 3B | K. Hernández | 1B | Singleton (L) |
| 1B | Biggio (L) | CF | Meyers |
| SS | Ahmed | LF | Loperfido (L) |
| 2B | Lux (L) | RF | McCormick |
| P | Stone (R) | P | Valdez (L) |
Gavin Stone makes his 19th start of the season and his second after the All-Star Break tonight. Stone went into the break on a cold streak, allowing eight runs in 7 2/3 innings over his final two starts against Arizona and Philly. He started the first game out of the break for the Dodgers and pitched pretty well, allowing a run and six hits over five innings. Stone was able to work through traffic in the first four innings, but allowed a solo shot to Jarren Duran in the fifth for his first and only run allowed in the game. Stone’s struck out exactly three batters in each of his last three starts and only has 79 strikeouts in 101 2/3 innings this season. He’s already 30 innings shy of the career-high 131 2/3 he threw between the Majors and Minors last season and hasn’t missed a start this season, as he became arguably the most steady piece of the rotation. It’ll be interesting to see how the Dodgers handle him down the stretch (or if he’s even still a Dodger after this week). They’ll need some length out of him tonight, as the Dodger bullpen has been heavily used since the break. Surprisingly, no roster moves as of 3:50 when I scheduled this post. They’re sorta in roster crunch hell right now anyways, so we’ll see how that goes.
The Astros counter with their ace, Framber Valdez. Valdez has been one of the better pitchers in the AL over the last few years with a pair of top-10 Cy Young finishes and All-Star appearances. Valdez avoided major injury back in April after being scratched from a start with left elbow soreness. It turned out to be relatively minor as a only missed a couple weeks, and he’s been pretty good since then for the most part. Valdez has a 3.63 ERA/3.76 FIP over 104 innings this season, which would be his worst numbers since 2021. Valdez has allowed two or fewer earned runs in 10 of his 17 starts and has gone seven or more innings seven times already. He’s had a few blow up starts (a pair of five-run outings, one five-inning eight-run effort), but for the most part has been steady as the Astros have crawled back in the AL West. Valdez struck out a season-high 10 batters in his final start before the break, a seven-inning one-run start against the Marlins. He started the second game after the break and held the Mariners to two runs and three hits over 5 2/3, but issued four walks. Valdez can be a bit wild at times, as only 17 qualified pitchers have a higher walk rate than his 8.4 percent.
Valdez has found success despite allowing a lot of hard contact. He’s been in the bottom 10th percentile of average exit velocity in four of the last five seasons. This season, he has the fourth-highest average exit velocity among pitchers with over 150 batted balls against (91.3 MPH) and has the fifth-highest hard-hit rate allowed 48.3 percent). He survives this because he also leads qualified pitchers with a 60.5 percent ground ball rate and his 3.3 percent barrel/plate appearance rate is tied for the fifth best. He throws a sinker more than half of the time (50.8 percent), curve 28.5 percent, change 14.9 percent, slider 4.2 percent and four-seamer 1.7 percent of the time.
Freddie Freeman was scratched from the lineup and is heading back to LA.
Freddie Freeman was scratched from tonight’s Dodgers lineup, and is flying back to LA, Dave Roberts said
— Jack Harris (@ByJackHarris) July 26, 2024
His 3-year-old son, Maximus, has been in the hospital this week, according to an Instagram post yesterday from Freeman’s wife, Chelsea
No timeline on how long he’ll be gone
#Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said he’s not sure how long Freddie Freeman will be away from the team. They all just felt it was better for Freeman to be with his family during a difficult time.
— Juan Toribio (@juanctoribio) July 26, 2024
Obviously hoping for the best for all involved. Juan’s tweet makes it seem more like a mental well-being reason and hopefully there haven’t been any bad updates regarding his son’s health. It’s unknown how long Freeman will be away from the team.
With Freeman out tonight, Cavan Biggio starts at first and Gavin Lux starts at second against a lefty.
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The Dodgers made a small trade today, as they sent the recently DFA’d James Paxton back to Boston for Moises Bolivar.
#Dodgers make it official. James Paxton is traded back to the Boston Red Sox (he spent 2023 there) in exchange for 17 yr old IF Moises Bolivar. Signed as an international FA in January, Hitting .270 in Dominican Summer League
— Bill Plunkett (@billplunkettocr) July 26, 2024
Professional baseball players shouldn’t be allowed to be born in 2007. Bolivar turned 17 earlier this month and has a .767 OPS in the Dominican Summer League. When I was 17 I was riding big wheels down hills in my neighborhood.
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The Dodgers had a TBD listed for the finale on Sunday in Houston. It’ll be River Ryan, who earns his second start after debuting on Monday. That means it’ll be three rookies starting the series in Houston (with Justin Wrobleski going tomorrow).
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First pitch is scheduled for 5:10 PM PT and will be shown exclusively on Apple TV+.
Tonight's Dodgers-Astros game is only on Apple TV+
— Eric Stephen (@ericstephen) July 26, 2024
That's a subscription service, but MLB has been running a promotion all year that gets you 2 months freehttps://t.co/UdDDtvnFws
As someone who was a previous subscriber who just signed up again today, I can verify this works
Use this if you, like me, forgot that the Dodgers had an Apple TV+ game and cancelled the service like a month ago.
