Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Dodgers (92-63) dropped what was a very winnable game last night against the Colorado Rockies (60-95) by a score of 6-3. The offense was 1-8 with runners in scoring position, and left twelve men on base overall. Daniel Hudson has been struggling and Ben Casparius is with the team, so I’m still not quite sure what their pitching plan has been. Walker Buehler gave up four earned runs, but three of those came over the first two innings and he settled in nicely after that. There were some very promising moments in his outing, with nine strikeouts and just one walk, but he needs to figure out how to start his games with a clean first inning. Eventually the Dodgers loaded the bases in the ninth inning to bring the game-winning run to the plate with two outs, but Max Muncy struck out to end the game. The Rockies’ pitching and offense performed better than that of the Dodgers, and the lead in the NL West is down to just three games. Today Yoshinobu Yamamoto will take the mound making his third start since returning from the injured list, while Antonio Senzatela makes his second start of the year.
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| 7:10 PM | Los Angeles | ||
| DH | Blackmon (L) | DH | Ohtani (L) |
| SS | Tovar | RF | Betts |
| 3B | McMahon (L) | 1B | Freeman (L) |
| 1B | Toglia (S) | LF | T. Hernández |
| 2B | Rodgers | C | Smith |
| CF | Hilliard (L) | 2B | Lux (L) |
| LF | Jones (L) | CF | Edman (S) |
| RF | Cave (L) | SS | Rojas |
| C | Goodman | 3B | K. Hernández |
| P | Quantrill (R) | P | Buehler (R) |
The Dodgers will keep the lineup very similar with Will Smith back in the lineup over Hunter Feduccia, and Kiké Hernández at third base over Muncy. This offense is good enough to beat up on this Colorado’s pitching staff, so they’ll need to find a way to get more runs across tonight. They struggled with the zone last night with important calls benefitting Colorado, but great teams win those games anyways.
Colorado will send out a nearly identical lineup, with Hunter Goodman starting at catcher over Jacob Stallings. Charlie Blackmon has two home runs in the first two games of this series after having nine during his first 115 games, so hopefully the Dodgers can stop doing that.
An issue I personally had last night was with Dave Roberts opting to not pinch-hit for Gavin Lux with a left-on-left matchup. With the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the fifth inning, the Rockies brought in Luis Peralta to face Lux. Peralta is a 23 year-old lefty with a fastball in the upper-90’s and has had a strikeout rate north of 35.0% at nearly all of his stops in the minor-leagues.
I’m not one to question Roberts decision making very often as they have much more information than I do, but not pinch hitting for Lux is pretty hard to justify for me. It’s the kind of move you make when you have the division locked up by eleven games with two weeks to go, and want to see if you can get Lux going against a lefty. It is not a decision you make with a crucial series against San Diego around the corner. Lux has a 19 wRC+ and .402 OPS with a 32.7% strikeout rate against lefties this season. The other options were Andy Pages with a .917 OPS against LHP, Hernández at .673, and Chris Taylor at .551, two of which can play second base. Baseball isn’t played on paper and people love to act like Dave has no “feel” for the game and always goes to matchups and decisions based on “analytics”, but issues actually tend to happen when he goes with his gut. Everything points to Lux struggling to put the ball in play in that situation, and to nobody’s surprise Lux struck out. That’s not his fault, he was put in a position where his likelihood to succeed was incredibly minimal, and with his bat slumping recently I can’t see any angle where that call makes sense in any capacity. Apologies for the rant, but with how close this division race is, moves like this can’t happen, and they definitely can’t happen in the postseason.
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Here’s how Yamamoto and Senzatela compare. These are Senzatela’s stats from his 2022 season, his most recent where he threw a considerable amount of innings due to a myriad of injuries.
Senzatela signed a five-year, $50.5 million deal through 2026 with a club option in 2027 back in 2021 and was expected to be a staple in Colorado’s rotation, but two major injuries have limited him to just 103.0 innings over his last three seasons, including just 10.2 over the last two. He tore his ACL in 2022 and after recovering, he suffered a UCL injury just seven innings into his 2023 season. He had Tommy John surgery in the middle of July last year, so he’s made his return relatively quickly, and hopefully he maintains his health moving forwards. He never had strikeout stuff prior to injury and was always decent but not great, which is good for a rotation that struggles to get quality innings.
Yamamoto has made two starts since returning from the injured list and has looked strong in both. He struggled a little bit with command in his last outing against the Braves, but was otherwise good. He went four scoreless innings allowing just four hits and two walks with three strikeouts. Despite generating just three strikeouts, he managed to get ten whiffs in 72 pitches. He upped his pitch count after throwing 59 in his first outing against the Cubs, so overall it was a positive outing. He’s thrown 82.0 innings this year, and you can’t just assume that he would maintain this level of performance over a full season, but he ranks among the top starters in baseball with a minimum of 80.0 innings pitched. His 2.63 ERA is sixth, his 2.53 FIP is third, a 28.5% strikeout rate ranks 13th, and his strikeout minus walk rate of 22.8% is 11th.
It’s unfortunate that the team essentially needs him to be a frontline starter in his first season due to injuries in the rotation, but ultimately that is what they were looking for when they signed him to a 12-year, $325 million deal this offseason. I’m sure they were expecting that performance at some point, but maybe not immediately in his age 25 rookie season. Either way, this is his easiest remaining matchup, as his next one is lined in Coors Field and then whichever postseason game his starts.
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Tony Gonsolin seems likely to make his return next weekend in Colorado, and I’d assume that’s more likely if the playoff seeding is figured out, but still it’s nice to see him healthy and an option for the postseason roster.
Landon Knack and Buehler against the red-hot Padres is a tough matchup, but those are the type of opponents they’ll face in October regardless.
Anthony Banda seems to be on his way back in the near future after hitting a paper towel dispenser.
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First pitch is at 1:10 PT on SNLA.
