Baseball is an interesting sport. He gives hope even when there is no reason to have hope. But this hope has not come from nowhere. In a small sample of games – three of which are certainly qualified – anyone can beat anyone. So, even if you don’t like your chances, you can hope that you will win that day. It may not be much hope. But if you sit down watching the match, there is part of you who think that “we could win this”.
A sort of strange way to start an overview of the series, but I imagine that you wonder why I stand out this way. This is because we are confronted with the Dodgers Juggernaut Los Angeles, who are of course in first place and intended for another appearance in the playoffs and probably more. In a way, there is no real reason to write an overview of the series against a team like Dodgers. For most teams, I inform at least some of you how good the opponent is. I don’t need to do it here. You may not know the names, but you get the essentials.
But you probably know most of the names. It’s a lot of familiar names. The Dodgers offensive is 3rd in baseball, perhaps 2nd at the time of the exit. I write this before all Sunday matches were played. The Dodgers offensive was not led by Shohei Ohtani, although he has a 164 WRC +. Not by Freddie Freeman, although he has a 138 WRC +. And not by Mookie Betts, which has had a bad offensive season. No, he is led by the receiver Will Smith, with a 171 WRC +. Isn’t it boring?
Andy Pages has a very promising second year after a not particularly impressive recruit season. He plays a good central field and hits a good amount of circuits (19). It does not work much, although it only comes out about an average amount of time. The Top 100 prospect, Alex Freeland, seems to be the regular starter at 3B now. At the time of writing these lines, he has a 195 WRC + in 11 steps, but also has a babip of 0.800 and 4 withdrawals in the stick, so the jury is very still on him.
Max Muncy is on a rehabilitation assignment and we could very well see it in this series instead. He has a 134 WRC + this year. For those who desperately wanted the dodgers to prefer Nolan Arenado to Muncy, not really working. And apparently, they have a top 100 perspective which also plays 3B? Yeah, if Arenado is only ready to go to the dodgers, it does not happen.
This programming does not work on 9 deeply. It does not even work at 7 deep. Betts, as previously mentioned, has an 87 WRC +. He has only one .241 Babip, but his Xwoba is honestly not better than his real Woba. It’s better, but as … he should have a .260 babip, not a better .300 babip. And he lost all his power. He can apparently play SS now, so of course. Betts always leads. Michael Comforto, who is a bad LF defender, so he was below the replacement. He always starts with every match.
And Tommy Edman, who could work through an injury or is no longer a full -time starter. He started in 3 of the last 6 games. This is because Miguel Rojas has a striking line slightly higher than the average this season. Edman has an 87 WRC +. Finally, the days when Will Smith does not get caught, Dalton Rushing is. And he took a very difficult start to his MLB career. So there will be holes in this range whatever happens.
As for the enclosure of the lifts, well it is a bit similar. They rank technically 4th in baseball at FWAR and I say that because … it must be due to a lever effect. But in fact no, it is not a lever effect, they are sleeves. The Dodgers launched 480 rounds, which is nearly 50 more rounds than the following and almost 100 more than the cardinals. It is therefore a mediocre enclosure that launches a lot of sleeves.
It includes two different methods to build an enclosure: your cheap random ups and your costly listers. The common theme is to throw many of them on the wall and hope for the stick. Cheap lifts work better than expensive lifts. Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates are both winning $ 29 million and are currently injured. Blake Treinen has only been good healthy to launch in 9 games and was only good. Cheaper lifts are also injured: Brusdal Graterol, Michael Grove, Evan Phillips and Michael Kopech.
Three different dodgers made stops last week. Although one of them is sometimes the starter Justin Wrobleski, who obtained a backup of 3 rounds. The other was from Jack Dreyer, who obtained his first career stop when Dave Roberts was forced to withdraw Blake Treinen from match 5-1 because he had not obtained a single left-handed striker in this round. Dreyer seems more good than tall, although his time and his FIP are quite good.
Does this mean that our third guy to get a backup is actually the closest? The left -hander Alex Vesia certainly has the statistics to save him, but it was his first judgment since June 11. So I don’t know who closes games for dodgers in this series. They have old reds closer to Alexis Diaz, which the dodgers may have repaired since he launched 4.1 impeccable rounds with them. They also exchanged the solid Brock Stewart lift on the deadline.
They have a fourth left -hander, Anthony Banda, who is not very good. 2021 5th round ben Casparius is correct. In a way, he had the chance to start in the middle of the year and was terrible, so he is a better lift than his statistics. The cardinals scored two in a round of him earlier this season. Overall, however, not necessarily a scary enclosure to be honest. Each of them is able to close a team in a given night, but they are not consistent on this subject.
Sonny Gray (4.38 ERA / 3.09 FIP / 2.95 xfip) against Tyler Glasnow (3.38 ERA / 4.58 FIP / 3.65 XFIP)
Glasnow is currently in good health, which is unlucky for cardinals. He has only made 9 departures this year and as you can expect, nine starts can lead to funky figures. In this case, Glasnow has authorized a disproportionate amount of circuits, leading to higher FIP. But it still looks like Glasnow, so it will be difficult to strike.
Meanwhile, Sonny Gray is in a little stretch, he will be on the road and he will face the Dodgers. I will forgive you if you are not completely optimistic about this beginning, because the signs are not great. But it is baseball and maybe Gray can come together for this start.
Miles Mikolas (4.83 ERA / 4.57 FIP / 4.61 XFIP) against Emmet Sheehan (3.60 ERA / 2.74 FIP / 4.26 XFIP)
If you do not feel very well about Sonny Gray on the road against the dodgers, there is no way you have sunny feelings about Mikolas the next day. The recent trend of cardinals beginners exploded? Yeah, I don’t know that it will change in this series. On paper, it’s a more difficult series for any launcher
Sheehan, on the other hand, is a little less frightening to face than the other starting launchers. He only made 4 official departures and launched 6 games this year. Really, all the statistics of the starting launchers are not reliable in the sense that there are practically no games that they have really presented. We seem “lucky” to face a relatively healthy rotation. That said, by most metrics, Sheehan is their worst starter, so I hope to hit him
Matthew Liberatore (3.96 ERA / 3.58 FIP / 4.17 XFIP) against Shohei Ohtani (2.40 ERA / 2.70 XFIP / 3.23 XFIP)
If you are facing the Dodgers, you want your starter to be left -handed. It is not because they are a bad offensive team against the left -handed launchers, it is because they are a worst offensive team against LHP (112 WRC +) that against RHP (115 WRC +). But always a fairly difficult team to stop. Liberatore will have a challenge like any launcher against the Dodgers.
Ohtani’s statistics are misleading in the sense that he has not yet been invited to launch several sleeves. He made 7 departures, but presented only the equivalent of 3 departures with only 15 rounds. In his latest departure, he faced 16 strikers and granted 2 deserved points, so he will be good for around 4 rounds in this departure.
So there you have it. It will be a difficult series, but it is always baseball and anything can happen. Simply ask the pirates a few years ago when they won the series of the season against the Dodgers.
