MidValleySports.Com

By Those Deferred Benchwarmers

Well, the sky is falling again. Oh wait, hang on, we are getting reports that the Dodgers won Sunday, so now everything is good! Either the Dodgers will lose in the playoffs and all the worriers will be like “Yeah, we knew it” or the Dodgers will win the World Series and all the worriers will deny they were ever worried. The truth of the matter is, and we’ll likely repeat this several times over the next two months: If the Dodgers’ stars perform, they will be tough to beat, but if they don’t the Dodgers will not go back-to-back. The return of the bullpen arms and the Muncy/Kim/Edman trio increases the margin of error for the Dodgers, but the stars need to perform if they are going to win again. 

The Week in Review

Headline for the Week: Dodgers Struggle in San Diego

Results: The Padres dominated the Dodgers offense to start the series, before the Dodger offense woke up in game three. The teams are now tied together for first. 

Pitching Analysis: Blake Snell was solid: 7 innings, 6 hits, 2 runs, 5 strikeouts. If someone besides Alex Freeland had brought their bats to San Diego, we’d probably be talking about how Snell looks the part of a Playoff Ace. Tyler Glasnow struggled with control (four walks in four innings), which raises some concern about his potential playoff viability, but the general performance otherwise does lessen those worries. With the Dodgers trailing in the first two games, the bullpen, which is slowly recovering, did not see the use of any high leverage guys in games 1 and 2. 

The high leverage arms (Dreyer, Scott, Yates, and Treinen) combined to throw three shutout innings, allowing only one hit and striking out 2. Yoshinobu Yamamoto was solid in stopping the losing streak.

Hitting Analysis: The only Dodger who did any damage on Friday or Saturday was Alex Freeland. Freeland hit his first major league homer on Friday, then followed it up with a pinch hit home run on Saturday. Nestor Cortes got his revenge on the Dodgers for Game 1, as he went six strong innings, allowing only one hit and striking out three. If the Yankees didn’t have their own problems (Volpe6 is such an elite troll), they’d probably be cursing Cortes for not doing this in October. In the first two games, Freeland was 2 for 3 with 2 HRs, and the rest of the Dodger lineup was 3 for 54. 

On Saturday night we wrote: “Are we worried about the Dodger offense? Still… no.” Our reasoning was: baseball is a long season and baseball is baseball, there’s going to be a lot of struggles. The offense is not fully healthy, and we expect the returns of Max Muncy, Tommy Edman, and Hye-seong Kim to provide a boost. We also hope that the return of those three stabilizes the lineup (i.e. removes Conforto from the equation) and provides some continuity as the team prepares for the stretch run. 

The Dodgers responded well on Sunday, going 9 for 35 with 4 home runs, scoring eight times in flipping the script against the Padres. When the Dodger offense clicks, it really clicks. 

Dodger Record Since We Said Not to Worry: 16-15

Next Series’ Preview

Matchups: The Reds come to Dodger Stadium for a three-game set. 
What to Look for/Analysis: The Reds were hot for a bit, and although they have cooled off (5-5 in their last 10). They are right in the thick of the Wild Card race, currently sitting just outside the playoffs a game and a half back. With the Dodgers owning the tiebreaker over the Padres (9-4 overall record) we’re not quite at check-the-Padres-score-every-night, but if the race remains tight, we are approaching that territory.