Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Dodgers secured the series win last night in a 10-5 victory that once again involved the offense teeing off against the Nationals’ starting pitcher. The team scored six within the first three innings and never surrendered that significant lead, with the Nationals just tacking on a few runs at the end. Roki Sasaki will be on the mound as the Dodgers look for a sweep, drawing a more favorable matchup in the Nationals rather than the Blue Jays. The left-handed Foster Griffin will be making his second start of the season after spending three years in the NPB with the Yomiuri Giants. He’ll face one of the weaker lineups that the Dodgers can field at the moment, so this is as favorable as a matchup can be against LA.
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| 10:35 A.M. | Washington D.C. | ||
| DH | Ohtani (L) | RF | Wood (L) |
| SS | Rojas | 2B | Nuñez (S) |
| LF | T. Hernández | 1B | García Jr. (L) |
| 1B | Freeman (L) | LF | Lile (L) |
| CF | Pages | CF | Wiemer |
| RF | Call | SS | Abrams (L) |
| 3B | Espinal | 3B | Vivas (L) |
| C | Rushing (L) | C | Ruiz (S) |
| 2B | Freeland (S) | DH | Tena (L) |
| P | Sasaki (R) | P | Griffin (L) |
Both teams make significant changes to their lineup for this series finale. Brady House, Curtis Mead, Drew Millas, and Jacob Young will all be on the bench after starting yesterday’s game, while José Tena, Nasim Nuñez, Keibert Ruiz, and Joey Wiemer all start in their place. Wiemer gets his first start of this series, despite slashing .588/.682/1.059 through his first five games.
The Dodgers will put out by far their weakest lineup of the season as they look to get out of DC and prepare for a series against the Blue Jays starting tomorrow afternoon. It’s in part due to rest, in part to injury, and in part to the left-handed Griffin on the mound. Miguel Rojas, Alex Call, Santiago Espinal, and Dalton Rushing all start over Mookie Betts (IL), Kyle Tucker (rest), Max Muncy (rest + LHP), and Will Smith (rest). The team hasn’t had any issue scoring this series, but Griffin is the best pitcher they’ve faced yet.
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While I hated the Miles Mikolas deal that Washington handed out this offseason, I quite liked their decision to sign Griffin. He signed a one-year $5.5 million dollar deal to return to Major League Baseball after spending three years in the NPB. His final season with Yomiuri saw him log a 1.62 ERA, 1.78 FIP, and a 0.95 WHIP across 78.0 innings, giving up just one homer all season.
He picked up his first win of the year in his season debut against the Phillies, allowing just two earned runs across five innings with five strikeouts and no walks. He threw seven different pitches during that outing, with Stuff+ grading his four-seamer, sinker, cutter, and sweeper all as plus pitches. He also mixes in a curveball, splitter, and a changeup. The fastball sits in the low-90’s, while everything else is generally in the mid-80’s.
Sasaki had very troubling Spring Training results, with a 15.58 ERA across 8.2 innings pitched including 15 walks and 2 HBP, looking erratic every time he toed the rubber. Despite that, he logged his best performance since the 2025 postseason in his outing against the Guardians. It wasn’t anything to write home about necessarily, but after the spring he had, it was much improved. He went four innings where he allowed just one run on four hits and two walks, with four strikeouts.
He sat 97.6 mph on the fastball which is a decent range for him to sit in if he can sustain that over an entire outing, but threw his new cutter nearly a third of the time. The splitter usage dropped to 23.1%, but the most noteworthy development there was that he threw it just once against right-handed batters. Part of that was Cleveland stacking lefties that game, but part was definitely a decision made by the Dodgers. He was able to throw the cutter in the zone 59.1% of the time, compared to 47.4% for the four-seamer and 5.6% for the splitter. He needs to find some sort of way he can consistently throw strikes, and the cutter might be helping him significantly in that department. Who knows how effective of a pitch it’ll be by itself, but just having a pitch that he can land in the zone helps everything else. The splitter as good as it is, is best used as a put-away pitch with two strikes, and it can’t be leveraged to maximize it’s effectiveness if Roki can’t find a way to get two strikes in the first place. He’ll look to build upon that outing today against the Nationals who have just one right-handed batter in their starting lineup in Wiemer.
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River Ryan looked great in his Triple-A start, an encouraging sign as they will need him at some point this season.
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Really tough break for Mookie Betts who was off to a good start and looking to bounce back from a poor 2025 season.
Hyeseong Kim returning makes sense, but slotting him as the strong side of the platoon with Rojas is a bit surprising. I figured that they’d move Freeland to shortstop and have Kim start at 2B while Rojas subs in for one of them whenever need be, but it shows that the Dodgers really want Freeland to stick at 2B.
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First pitch was scheduled at 10:35 AM PT on SNLA, but the weather was wet as hell in DC, and the start time is now 12:45 PM PT.
Today’s game will begin at approximately 3:45 pm. Thank you for your patience!
— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) April 5, 2026
