Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Dodgers (37-20) and Phillies (29-28) kicked off their three game series last night with the Friday night baseball slot for Apple TV, which saw the Dodgers win the opener 4-2. The offense jumped on Zack Wheeler early, hitting solo homers in each of the first, second, third, and fifth innings, accounting for all the runs the Dodgers would score. Justin Wrobleski had a no-hitter going into the sixth inning until Kyle Schwarber greeted him with a solo shot, his 22nd of the season. Wrobleski notched a career high nine strikeouts last night after hardly missing any bats during his first handful of starts. Edgardo Henriquez allowed an earned run, but Alex Vesia and Tanner Scott shut the door, securing the Dodgers sixth consecutive win and their 13th in their last 15 contests. Tonight will feature Roki Sasaki who has been compiling quality outings lately, up against the left-handed Jesús Luzardo who at times is one of the more dominant lefties in the league. He struggles mightily with consistency and is prone to blow up starts on occasion, but the Dodgers won’t necessarily have an easy time out there despite Luzardo carrying a 4.38 ERA into tonight’s outing.
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|---|---|---|---|
| 7:10 P.M. | Los Angeles | ||
| DH | Schwarber (L) | DH | Ohtani (L) |
| SS | Turner | CF | Pages |
| 1B | Harper (L) | 1B | Freeman (L) |
| LF | Marsh (L) | SS | Betts |
| 3B | Bohm | RF | Tucker (L) |
| 2B | Stott (L) | C | Smith |
| C | Realmuto | 2B | Rojas |
| RF | García | LF | Call |
| CF | Crawford (L) | 3B | Espinal |
| P | Luzardo (L) | P | Sasaki (R) |
The Dodgers will mix things up a bit against the left-handed Luzardo, as Miguel Rojas starts at second over Alex Freeland, while Santiago Espinal starts over Max Muncy. For the Phillies, against the right-handed Sasaki, Brandon Marsh moves up to fourth in the order, while Justin Crawford starts in center field over Steward Berroa.
Shohei Ohtani added three hits last night including his tenth home run of the season as he has seemingly found something at the plate over the last few weeks. Over his last 15 games and 65 plate appearances, he is slashing .412/.523/.784, good for a 1.307 OPS and a 257 wRC+. He has twelve walks to just eleven strikeouts over that stretch, cutting down on his strikeouts significantly while being more patient and selective at the plate. Naturally, the team is 13-2 since he began this streak and has the top offense in baseball in wRC+ (134), OPS (.830), runs (94), home runs (25), walk rate (11.8%), and additionally has the third lowest strikeout rate at 18.6%.
The offense goes as Shohei goes.
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Here’s how Sasaki and Luzardo have fared.
Sasaki has made four starts in May prior to tonight’s outing, and he’s been very solid this entire month, with a 3.52 ERA, 3.28 FIP, 1.04 WHIP, and 21 strikeouts to just five walks in 23.0 innings. The walks are significantly down, the strikeouts are up, and the home runs are drastically down with just two allowed this month. He’s been very solid and reliable this month, something that marks a huge improvement for him. The difference maker has been reintroducing his hard splitter with consistent movement, and slowly decreasing the usage of his mid-80’s “forkball”. He almost completely shelved the fork his last time out in favor of the new splitter, throwing just one fork compared to 24 splitters. The splitter has predictable movement downward and arm side movement that he can actually command and control, compared to the fork that moves like a knuckleball at times. That’s great for inducing a whiff when you need one, but bad for actually establishing it as a pitch in the strike zone.
He’s logged wins in back-to-back outings, most recently allowing two earned runs over five innings against the Brewers after allowing just one run over seven innings against the Angels. He’ll look to continue his recent run of success against the Phillies who have just a .687 OPS and a 91 wRC+ against right-handed pitching this season.
Here’s how Luzardo’s Baseball Savant page looks despite having a 4.38 ERA.
This isn’t the Baseball Savant page that you’d expect from a your typical pitcher with a 4.40 ERA, but Luzardo isn’t your typical pitcher. He’s given up thirty earned runs on the season, but twenty of those came in his first four starts, highlighted by an eight run outing against the Cubs.
He has just a 2.31 ERA over his last seven starts and 39.0 innings pitched, with 42 strikeouts to 12 walks and just two home runs allowed. He’s been elite for over half of his season, but his ERA is still trying to recover from a brutal April. He allowed four runs against the Dodgers in a seven inning outing back in September last season, but most recently went six innings while allowing just two runs in Game 2 of the National League Division Series, a game the Dodgers managed to come back and win.
He attacks lefties with a mid-80’s sweeper and a mid-to-upper 90’s sinker, while going sweeper, four-seamer, and changeup to right-handed batters. He’s always been hell on lefties, so for him it’s a matter of effectively retiring right-handed batters.
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In other news,
One month for a Grade 1 hamstring strain seems reasonable, but Teoscar Hernández came back too early last year and was a shell of himself the rest of the year. Naturally, they’ll be more on top of that this season.
The Dodgers were always going to have to limit Tyler Glasnow‘s workload somehow.
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First pitch is at 7:10 PT on SNLA.
