Dodgers: Lessons learned from a weekend series in NY

The Dodgers entered their final east coast trip of the regular season looking to finish strong against a team in wildcard contention.

The Dodgers’ series with the Mets was not a good exhibition of playoff caliber baseball but they were able to come home to Los Angeles with a series victory.  LA won the first and last game of the series and they were dominated by Jacob deGrom in the middle game of the series.  All in all, the blue were able to do just enough to win a series against a quality opponent battling for their playoff lives.

With the conclusion of their series with the New York Mets, the Dodgers are done going to the east coast, at least for the duration of the regular season.  After hosting the Rays for a mini two game series on Tuesday and Wednesday, the rest of the Dodgers’ schedule will be against their NL West opponents.

Here are three lessons learned from the weekend series in New York.

The starting pitching slump may be over

Coming into the weekend series, the Dodger offense did not have the biggest slump on the team.  That would be the starting rotation, and most importantly, the big three of Clayton Kershaw, Hyun-Jin Ryu, and Walker Buehler in the rotation.  Each of the big three came out of the series with a solid start.

Kershaw went six plus innings allowing two earned runs on four hits, including one home run.  He did walk three batters but his “stuff” looked much sharper and he located his pitches better.  Kersh even decided to mix in a few changeups which were a surprise.  Ryu followed suit with a seven inning outing allowing just two hits and no earned runs.  He matched Jacob deGrom pitch for pitch.

Walker Buehler went five innings allowing two earned runs and despite not having his strikeout stuff working, he battled the Mets.  Walker struck out just one batter which was a surprise, but he did retire the last eleven batters he faced.  Buehler was limited as expected since Dave Roberts wanted to get several Dodger relievers some work.

Three bullpen lessons learned in NY

Dave Roberts is clearly using the remaining schedule to get relievers used to some scenarios that they may encounter in October.  Julio Urias has pitched out of the bullpen to begin innings for much of the season.  On Saturday he was brought into the game with runners on base.  Julio struggled hitting and walking a batter before allowing a three run double.  Urias may not be able to come into games with runners on base if he continues to blow opportunities like he did on Saturday.

Dustin May also continued to pitch in relief and delivered a scoreless inning on Sunday as he escaped a jam that he created.  That makes it three straight scoreless appearances out of bullpen for May and he is trending in the right direction for the postseason roster.  A few more scoreless outings to close to season and it would be tough to leave Dustin off of the postseason roster.

The third bullpen lesson learned in New York was that perhaps Kenley Jansen is rounding back into form.  He pitched a scoreless eighth inning on Sunday in his only action during the series.  Jansen struck out Pete Alonso on three pitches and hit 95 on his last pitch to Alonso.  It marked the second straight outing in which Kenley had velocity and location.

Adding further to the postseason auditions, the Dodgers used a combination of Adam Kolarek and Kenta Maeda for the ninth inning with a one run lead.  Maeda finished off the inning and earned the save.  He could be asked to finish a similar situation in the postseason.