Even as his team entered perhaps its most crucial stretch of the season, Dave Roberts said he wouldn’t be managing the Dodgers any differently this week.
Given the way the club has been playing, he really didn’t need to.
With a 6-3 defeat of the Baltimore Orioles on Thursday night, the Dodgers continued their surge through August, taking a three-game series against a fellow World Series contender while moving four games clear of the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League West, matching their largest division lead in the last three weeks.
“Great homestand, really good baseball,” Roberts said after his team won seven of nine games at Dodger Stadium over the last week and a half. “I thought we showed well. I don’t think it was a litmus test or anything, but it’s still good to go out there and find ways to win baseball games.”
This week figured to be a defining moment in the Dodgers’ up-and-down season.
Hosting the Orioles was the first big test. The next will come this weekend, when the Dodgers travel to Arizona for a critical four-game series against the second-place Diamondbacks.
If the Dodgers were feeling the pressure to turn up the urgency, however, it hasn’t been reflected in the way they’ve talked publicly.
“Obviously, everybody knows the situation,” catcher Austin Barnes said after returning to the lineup. “But we’re kind of an older team. We’ve been in these situations before … We just got to focus on winning baseball games.”
The same goes for how they’ve carefully managed their injury-plagued roster.
The club held first baseman Freddie Freeman out of the starting lineup for a third straight game, hoping a series-long break would help ease the discomfort he’s been feeling in his fractured right middle finger. Freeman is expected back in the lineup for Friday’s series opener in Arizona.
The Dodgers’ batting order didn’t look overly menacing. Slugging third baseman Max Muncy was on the bench against a left-handed starter. Another left-handed hitter, streaking second baseman Gavin Lux, was dropped to the No. 8 spot. Light-hitting Tommy Edman was the cleanup hitter for the first time in his career.
Yet the Dodgers dinked and dunked their way to another productive night, becoming the first club in the majors to reach 80 wins.
They cashed in on Kiké Hernández’s down-the-line double in the second inning, opening the scoring on Chris Taylor’s single in the next at-bat.
They manufactured four runs in the fourth inning on a bouncing, two-run double from Barnes, an RBI single from Mookie Betts and a opposite-field, bloop single from Miguel Rojas.
They added insurance in the eighth, loading the bases for an Edman sacrifice fly.
Betts, Edman, Lux, Taylor and Rojas all finished with two of the Dodgers’ 14 hits, their most since Aug. 3.
“There’s little things I think that need to be cleaned up,” Roberts said. “But overall, guys are understanding that this is a time to lock it in and they’re doing so.”
The Dodgers’ pitching plans also epitomized their even-keel attitude.
Before the game, Roberts announced the Dodgers will be using a spot starter — potentially triple-A right-hander Justin Wrobleski — Sunday against the Diamondbacks, rather than No. 1 starter Jack Flaherty on normal rest. Flaherty will start Monday’s finale instead.
Roberts also said the Dodgers wouldn’t alter their bullpen usage this week, not yet feeling the season — or a division race that has grown tighter than expected after the club’s slog through the summer — warranted the risk of overusing high-leverage arms.
“There’s some guys we’re probably going to try to stay away from the bullpen,” Roberts said before Thursday’s game, such as hard-throwing right-hander Michael Kopech and top left-hander Alex Vesia. “If it were October, they would be available.”
On Thursday, at least, they had enough to get across the finish line.
Starting pitcher Bobby Miller struggled with his command (three walks and one hit batter to only three strikeouts) but wasn’t punished for it until Baltimore’s Colton Cowser hammered a 3-and-1 fastball for a three-run homer in the fifth.
“It’s just one bad pitch that I look back on,” said Miller, who also tweaked a left knee that has been an issue for him recently while trying to cover first base in the second inning. “Unfortunately, it’s over the fence.”
A resurgent bullpen, which entered the night with the fourth-best ERA in the majors in August, took the baton from there.
Anthony Banda pitched a scoreless sixth inning, lowering his ERA to a sterling 2.06. Blake Treinen inherited a bases-loaded jam in the seventh from Daniel Hudson — who was pitching for the first time in nine days after getting a break to manage his workload — and escaped it with a strikeout of Gunnar Henderson. Then, after Treinen returned for a scoreless eighth inning, Evan Phillips picked up his 17th save — and just his second since losing the full-time closer role last month — in a clean ninth.
“To have a really successful homestand like we had, I think, shows us a lot about ourselves and what we believed we are as a team,” Treinen said. “And then finally getting, you know, some guys healthy, back into our lineup has been a huge boost for us.”
Indeed, after going just 23-18 from the middle of May to the end of June, then suffering their first losing month in six years in an 11-13 July, the Dodgers are 17-8 in August, benefiting from a more balanced lineup, the bullpen’s return to form, and just enough production from a banged-up starting rotation.
“I’m pleased with how we’ve been playing,” Roberts said. “I just want to sustain that till the end of the season.”
Doing that remains a challenge.
The status of rotation ace Tyler Glasnow remains up in the air, with Roberts stopping short of calling his return from elbow tendinitis a guarantee.
“We’re hopeful,” Roberts said of Glasnow, who is scheduled to restart his throwing program Friday. “I think that there’s still a lot of variables to be certain. But I think everyone in the organization is hopeful.”
No. 2 starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto is on the mend, after pitching two innings in a rehab start with triple-A Oklahoma City on Wednesday. But he will need at least one more rehab outing, if not more, before rejoining the rotation.
In the meantime, the Dodgers are hoping they can hold off the Diamondbacks and third-place San Diego Padres — both of whom lost Thursday before the Dodgers took the field.
So far, they’ve been able to do so without pressing their short-handed roster. That approach will be tested again this weekend in Arizona.
“Maybe [the division being] close will keep us hungry,” Betts said. “Hungry might be the wrong word … but keeps us going through the end of the season, and then maybe that switch doesn’t necessarily have to be turned on or whatever. It just stays on the whole time. We’ll see.”
