Dodgers @ D’Backs August 27, 2014: Scott Van Slyke’s Best-Case Scenario

You know me, and you know I put very, very little importance on pitcher-vs-batter stats. One pitcher doesn’t face one batter enough to generate any kind of real sample size, and even if you could, that means that it took place over so many years as to render most of the data irrelevant.

	Dodgers			D’Backs
	6:40 p.m. PT			Phoenix, Ariz.
2B	Gordon		CF	Inciarte
CF	Puig		3B	Pennington
RF	Kemp		2B	Hill
SS	Ramirez		LF	Trumbo
LF	Van Slyke		RF	Marte
1B	Turner		1B	Pacheco
C	Ellis		C	Gosewich
3B	Rojas		SS	Gregorius
P	Kershaw (L)		P	Miley (L)

99 percent of the time, I believe that fully. Tonight is the other one percent of that: Scott Van Slyke has faced Wade Miley 19 times in his career, and he has four homers, three doubles and three walks. Three of those home runs came just this year alone, one in Australia in March, one in Los Angeles in April, and another in Arizona in May. In order to overcome sample size issues, you need some pretty overwhelming performance, and that’s what we’ve seen when these two meet. None of that guarantees that Van Slyke won’t simply go 0-4 tonight, but it’s certainly a push in the right direction.

Justin Turner gets a start at first base, and I really like the idea of giving Adrian Gonzalez a day off in a week that already has two off days. That’s three days off out of four for Gonzalez, who has played 44 more innings than any other Dodger, and that should set him up nicely for September.

Oh, and Clayton Kershaw is pitching. He’s really, really good. I don’t know, I just can’t take the Diamondbacks seriously. They’ve been a joke all year long, they looked horrendous last night… we should probably never underestimate a major league team, obviously. But man, does this feel like an exhibition before the real stretch run starts.

In more important new: Hyun-jin Ryu threw a two-inning simulated game and reported no pain, which is outstanding. He’ll likely return to the rotation in a few days, though we don’t yet know when; I imagine the exact timing will be less about him being ready and more about whatever kind of roster games Ned Colletti wants to do before the expansion happens on Sept. 1.

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