Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Dodgers (84-67) managed to lose another game last night via bullpen collapse as they dropped the second game of this series against the Phillies (91-61) by a score of 9-6. Shohei Ohtani threw five no-hit innings before the bullpen allowed nine earned runs while getting twelve outs. That’s not the ratio of runs-to-outs that you’re looking for, and Tanner Scott is the only Dodgers’ reliever this series to have a clean inning. Pitiful performance from the relief staff who had been quite solid as of late. Blake Snell will be on the mound looking to avoid a sweep as the Dodgers attempt to hold onto the NL West, while Jesús Luzardo looks to lead the Phillies to the top seed in the NL.
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| 7:10 P.M. | Los Angeles | ||
| CF | Bader | DH | Ohtani (L) |
| DH | Schwarber (L) | SS | Betts |
| 1B | Harper (L) | RF | T. Hernández |
| C | Realmuto | 1B | Freeman (L) |
| RF | Castellanos | CF | Edman (S) |
| LF | Kepler (L) | 2B | Rojas |
| 3B | Kemp | LF | Pages |
| 2B | Wilson | 3B | K. Hernández |
| SS | Stott (L) | C | Rortvedt (L) |
| P | Luzardo (L) | P | Snell (L) |
The offense has had encouraging performances this series against a tough Philly staff, putting up four earned runs against the likely Cy Young runner up in Cristopher Sanchez, in addition to three on Ranger Suárez who also owns a sub-3 ERA. They’ve also put up runs against all three of the Phillies’ highest leverage right-handed bullpen arms in Orion Kerkering, David Robertson, and Jhoan Duran. The bullpen disaster has directly caused two losses, but the offense has put up two consecutive great performances against the best the Phillies have to offer.
Tommy Edman is in center field today after starting at second base last night. This shifts Andy Pages to left field over Alex Call while Teoscar Hernández is in right field. Miguel Rojas will start at second base, while Ben Rortvedt gets the start despite Dalton Rushing returning from the IL yesterday.
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Here’s how the two lefties have fared.
Snell was coming off his worst start of the year against the Pirates his last time out, but bounced back extremely well in a dominant six inning performance against the Rockies. Once again it was the lowly Rockies on the road, but it was still encouraging to see the overpowering version of Snell, who racked up eleven strikeouts on 22 whiffs. Overall he has a 2.97 ERA, a 2.69 FIP, and a 1.25 WHIP over 39.1 innings since returning from the injured list in early August. He’s had a couple clunkers, but has a real test tonight against a Phillies team that has won 15 of their last 19 games.
Despite some inconsistencies, Luzardo has had a very strong year in his first season with the Phillies. He earned his 14th win his last time out against the Mets, allowing four runs on five hits and no walks over eight innings with ten strikeouts. It was an odd one, as he allowed all four runs and five hits in the first inning and then proceeded to throw seven perfect innings after that.
He’s fifth among starting pitchers in fWAR at 4.9 due to his 2.91 FIP, the sixth lowest mark in the sport. His 4.03 ERA is 32nd of qualified starters, but he has one of the largest gaps between ERA and all other underlying metrics, as he’s eleventh in xERA (3.39), ninth in xFIP (3.32), and twelfth in SIERA (3.48). He had an atrocious two starts back-to-back at the end of May, where he allowed twelve earned runs in 3.1 innings, followed by eight earned runs in 2.1 innings. He’s allowed 76 earned runs in 169.2 innings this year, but removing those two outliers he’d be at a 3.07 ERA over 165.0 innings, essentially right in line with his other metrics. The Dodgers will look to perform better against Luzardo tonight than they did back in April, where he threw seven scoreless innings while allowing just two hits with eight strikeouts.
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Looks like we can expect Rortvedt and Rushing to be the main duo for the remainder of the regular season as Smith deals with his hand issue.
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Eduardo Quintero and Christian Zazueta will be climbing up all the prospect rankings this offseason which is always nice to see.
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First pitch is at 7:10 PT on SNLA and MLB Network.
