Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
Now hitting about .200 against Padres’ pitching with 19 runs in five games, the Dodgers enter Wednesday night looking to get their shit together, for lack of a better term, after Tuesday’s mess. Scoring one run in the 1st and the 9th, the Dodgers managed to essentially implode in the 3rd with two errors helping lead to five runs.
With the Dodgers mentioning Tony Gonsolin would start tonight, as they are looking to keep every pitcher on five days rest, a roster move was made this morning for tonight’s meeting with the Padres.
Adam Kolarek has now been sent to Triple-A USC on Aug. 6, recalled with Joe Kelly going on the IL on Aug. 10, and now optioned back down two days later after pitching two innings last night. Meanwhile, Gonsolin gets his second start of the season and is within reach of moving off of prospect lists.
Gonsolin’s first start of the year back in Arizona went pretty well on July 31, at least by this season’s weird standards, as he allowed just one hit and one walk over his four innings of work. He threw just 63 pitches in the game, so there’s not much to go off of other than he’s the same pitcher he was a year ago.
Looking to support Gonsolin on the offensive end is about who you’d expect as Corey Seager continues to remain out of the lineup. However, this would seem to be a step in the right direction.
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|---|---|---|---|
| 6:40 p.m. | Los Angeles | ||
| SS | Tatis Jr. | LF | Pederson (L) |
| CF | Grisham (L) | RF | Betts |
| 3B | Machado | DH | Bellinger (L) |
| LF | Pham | 3B | Turner |
| 1B | Cronenworth (L) | 2B | Muncy (L) |
| RF | Myers | CF | Pollock |
| DH | Garcia (L) | SS | Taylor |
| C | Mejia (S) | 1B | Rios (L) |
| 2B | Profar (S) | C | Smith |
| P | Davies (R) | P | Gonsolin (R) |
For the Padres, it’ll be Zach Davies completing his circuit around the NL West. Having faced the Giants, Rockies and Diamondbacks in his first three starts of the season, Davies holds a 2.87 ERA in his 15 2/3 innings, with 13 strikeouts to just one walk.
Acquired from the Brewers during the offseason, Davies has given the Dodgers trouble in his six starts against them. His 1.98 ERA is his third-best against any team, and Davies has struck out 30 to seven walks across 36 1/3 innings. The Dodgers’ line of .224/.268/.381/.648 in those six games against Davies wasn’t helped last season when he held them to just one run in 12 innings, with the lone run a solo shot by Cody Bellinger.
Having never averaged 90 mph on any pitch across a full season, Davies’ sinker (88.2 mph), cutter (87.1) and changeup (79.2) are pretty evenly distributed this season. After throwing his sinker at least 52% of the time in each year of his career, the Padres have his change leading the way at 37.9%, followed by the sinker (33.6%) and the cutter (26%). I’d just like to point out that he lied back in March and it seems to be going well for him.
Another random and mostly inconsequential note, Davies is the only qualified pitcher beating Kenley Jansen in active spin on his cutter at 74.0.
Last Friday, the Diamondbacks really struggled against Davies as they managed just three singles against him in 5 2/3 innings.
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I was going to use this space to complain about the Dodgers’ second basemen hitting .206/.275/.286/.561 when you take out Enrique Hernandez’s Opening Day performance. However, center fielders are at .200/.263/.357/.620 and left fielders are .215/.292/.354/.646, so that seems like a pointless argument to make. Meanwhile the DH is hitting .273/.377/.485/.861.
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While he’s currently on the IL, Kelly’s suspension appears to be getting a little shorter (as assumed) once he is healthy.
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In former Dodgers news…
