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 of late, 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 also moving four games clear of the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League West standings, matching their largest division lead in the last three weeks.
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 dial, however, it certainly hasn’t been reflected in the way they’ve managed their roster.
The club held Freddie Freeman out of the starting lineup for a third-straight game Thursday, 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 rest of Thursday’s batting order didn’t look overly menacing either. Slugging third baseman Max Muncy was on the bench against a left-handed starter. Another lefty, 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.
They cashed in on Kiké Hernández’s down-the-line double in the second inning, opening the scoring on Chris Taylor’s RBI single in the next at-bat.
They manufactured four runs in the fourth inning on a bouncing two-run double from Austin Barnes, an RBI single from Mookie Betts and a bloop opposite-field single from Miguel Rojas.
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) on Sunday against the Diamondbacks, rather than turn to current No. 1 starter Jack Flaherty on normal four days’ rest (Flaherty will start Monday’s finale in Arizona instead).
Roberts also said the Dodgers wouldn’t be altering their bullpen usage this week, not yet feeling the season — nor a division race that has grown tighter than expected after the club’s slog through the summer — warranted the risk of over-using high-leverage arms.
“We’re probably going to try to stay away from the bullpen,” Roberts said before Thursday’s game, in the club’s normal course of action. “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 all night (three walks and one hit batter, to only three strikeouts) but wasn’t punished for it until Colton Cowser hammered a 3-and-1 fastball for a three-run homer in the fifth.
A recently 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 heavy 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.
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 now 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 on Thursday afternoon.
“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 Dodgers’ 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 shorthanded roster.
That approach will be tested again this weekend in Arizona.
