Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The top two teams in the National League West will face off against each for the first time this season, starting tonight in San Diego. The Dodgers (29-18) have now won five in a row after struggling for a few weeks, but maintain just a half game lead in the division as the Padres (28-18) keep finding ways to stack wins. The Padres haven’t been able to hit much at all, but their rotation has been good enough, while the bullpen has been lights out, converting nearly every close game. They’re on a three game winning streak of their own after a sweep of the Mariners (22-26), and will look to Michael King to put them into first place in the division. The Dodgers will turn to Yoshinobu Yamamoto who has had a relatively slow start to the year and will look to put a quality start under his belt against a struggling offense.
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| 6:40 P.M. | San Diego | ||
| DH | Ohtani (L) | 2B | Tatis Jr. |
| SS | Betts | DH | Andujar |
| 1B | Freeman (L) | 1B | Sheets (L) |
| RF | Tucker (L) | 3B | Machado |
| C | Smith | SS | Bogaerts |
| 3B | Muncy (L) | CF | Merrill (L) |
| CF | Pages | RF | Castellanos |
| LF | T. Hernández | LF | Laureano |
| 2B | Kim (L) | C | Duran |
| P | Yamamoto (L) | P | King (R) |
The Dodgers will send out their “A” lineup to open this series against the right-handed King. Essentially every player on the roster had a highlight from the sweep against the Angels where they outscored them 31-3 over three games. Shohei Ohtani has looked better at the plate lately, with six hits in Anaheim including three extra-base hits and three walks. Mookie Betts has two home runs in his last three games now, and seems to be putting together good at-bats and making hard contact in the majority of his plate appearances. His batting average on balls in play this season is a nearly unbelievable .128 thus far, so his numbers will take a big jump upwards once everything normalizes.
San Diego has had a tough time at the plate in May, with a .615 OPS and a 76 wRC+ through 16 games, despite going 9-7 during that stretch. Fernando Tatis Jr. (.581) somehow still doesn’t have a home run (surely he doesn’t hit ten this series against the Dodgers), Manny Machado (.604 OPS) and Jackson Merrill (.603 OPS) are barely clearing the .600 OPS mark, and they’re so starved for offense that they’re playing Nick Castellanos (.601 OPS) in right field intentionally.
They’ve also gotten a ton of contribution from the players you wouldn’t expect, so as to offset the slow starts from their stars so far. Miguel Andujar has a .793 OPS, Gavin Sheets (.896 OPS) is looking like one of the best power bats in the game, and Xander Bogaerts (.736 OPS, 114 wRC+) has been steady and consistent in the middle of the order. Eventually the bats from their big names will come around though and the Dodgers just have to hope that it’s not this week.
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Here’s how Yamamoto and King have fared thus far.
Yamamoto has had a slow start to the year, which is understandable if you consider his 173.2 innings in the 2025 regular season, 37.1 high stress postseason innings, and an early start to the year with the WBC. However, it’s not as if he’s stuff has taken a step back resulting in early season struggles, as his Stuff+ is the same or better on every pitch in his arsenal, and his fastball is averaging 95.9 mph after sitting 95.3 mph last season.
He’s not getting as many ground balls as he did last season, with his ground ball rate dropping from 52.8% down to 41.8%, resulting in a lot more balls in the air. He was excellent at preventing hitters from pulling the ball in the air last year, with just 12.1% of his batted balls allowed being pulled in the air. That’s essentially what every batter is trying to do at the plate, and this year nearly a quarter (23.5%) of his balls in play are being pulled in the air. That is the entire issue he’s run into this year, so it’s just a matter of how to best address that. Allowing batters to pull the ball in the air will result in more extra-base hits and homers, and that’s been the issue for Yamamoto, with eight homers allowed already after just 14 in all of 2025. Three of those came in his last outing against the Giants, and two of those came against Eric Haase, his only two home runs this season. Haase has 13 homers since the beginning of the 2023 season, so that is a problem.
King has been great for San Diego after signing a three-year $75 million dollar deal with the Padres this offseason. His 2.63 ERA is a bit low if you look at his underlying metrics, but King has routinely outperformed his advanced stats due to his ability to generate soft contact, in addition to pitching in a pitcher-friendly park, having a strong defense behind him, and elite relievers preventing inherited runs scoring. He’s coming off back-to-back starts where he allowed just one earned run against each of the Cardinals and Brewers, bouncing back from a four earned run outing against the White Sox. He dealt with a myriad of injuries in 2025 which limited him to just 73.1 innings, but the stuff looks to be the same as it was in his excellent 2024 season that saw him post a 2.95 ERA over 173.2 innings, resulting in a seventh place Cy Young finish. He throws each of his four primary pitches nearly a quarter of the time, with his changeup barely beating out his sinker for his most frequently used pitch this season. His changeup sits in the mid-80’s, his sinker and four-seamer in the low-to-mid 90’s, with a low-80’s sweeper being his primary breaking ball.
Also, if the Dodgers don’t scratch much across against King, San Diego has five relievers with an ERA below 2.53. Wandy Peralta has that 2.53, Bradgley Rodriguez has a 1.74, Jason Adam sits at 1.23, Mason Miller at 0.86, and Yuki Matsui is yet to give up a run in 8.2 innings. Jeremiah Estrada and Adrian Morejon are struggling in the earned run department early, but both of them have underlying metrics that point toward them getting back to their dominant levels sooner rather than later. Scary stuff.
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In other news,
The 30 year-old lefty recently acquired from the Blue Jays has a 6.69 ERA over eight outings and 36.1 innings, but can eat innings with the best of them when he’s on.
This means that Blake Snell is definitely expected to return this season which is encouraging news. Brusdar Graterol has been hurt in some capacity for years now, unfortunate to see that he can’t catch a break. Tyler Glasnow‘s back “flared up” so he’ll pause his throwing program, and well…. the Dodgers had to limit his innings somehow.
Jonathan Hernández is a hard throwing right-handed reliever that hasn’t thrown a pitch in the big leagues in two years after dealing with a reoccurring shoulder issue. Could just be depth, but he was in the upper-90’s with an impressive sinker, slider combo when he was healthy.
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First pitch is at 6:40 PT on SNLA.
