First, a caveat. The Miami Marlins are not a good Major League Baseball team.
This season, the rebuilding club has MLB’s second-most losses and second-fewest runs scored. On Wednesday night, their lineup featured only one hitter with a batting average above .262. Dominating them does not exactly portend future postseason success.
Still, what Landon Knack did at loanDepot Park, in the Dodgers’ 8-4 win over their middling hosts, was impressive.
Especially for a rookie pitcher auditioning for the Dodgers’ potential postseason rotation.
In one of his best starts of the season, Knack pitched five scoreless innings while giving up just two hits. He struck out seven batters, just one off his season-high, while only walking two.
Most importantly, he flashed the kind of stuff that could play come October, not only averaging a season-best 94.7 mph with his four-seam fastball, but also commanding it with nearly flawless precision.
“Felt really good to get things back on track a little bit, right from the rip,” said Knack, who was coming off a season-worst two-inning, five-run start against the Atlanta Braves last Saturday. “[I wanted to] really just kind of rip it from the beginning. Felt really good.”
In one of the more unexpected developments of the season, Knack has been one of the more reliable pitchers on the Dodgers’ banged-up staff — one that has grown suddenly more clear in recent days.
After announcing that Tyler Glasnow is expected to miss the rest of the season over the weekend, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts offered similar news Wednesday about right-hander Gavin Stone, saying the rookie star is “very unlikely” to pitch again this year as he continues to battle a shoulder injury.
Stone hasn’t given up all hope yet, saying he wants to see how his shoulder feels once he starts playing catch again next week. But already, Stone’s timeline is taking longer than expected. And with less than two weeks remaining in the regular season, there is hardly any time left for him to build back up and be a postseason contributor.
The Dodgers also optioned struggling right-hander Bobby Miller back to the minor leagues Wednesday, all but ending a 2024 season in which he suffered an 8.52 ERA.
That leaves the Dodgers with only a handful of starting pitching options to round out a rotation currently headlined by Jack Flaherty and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
There’s Walker Buehler, who has shown signs of progress lately after struggling earlier this season in his return from Tommy John surgery. There’s Clayton Kershaw, who threw an 80-plus pitch bullpen session Wednesday in the biggest step yet of his recovery from a toe injury. There’s Tony Gonsolin, a long-shot option who will throw his third minor-league rehab start this weekend, barely 12 months removed from Tommy John surgery.
And then there’s Knack, whose 3.39 ERA in 13 outings this year (11 of them starts) is third-best among Dodgers pitchers with at least five starts, trailing only Yamamoto and Flaherty.
“I just really like the way he has an arsenal that can get different hitters out,” said Roberts, who was particularly impressed by Knack’s ability to escape jams in the first and fifth with inning-ending strikeouts.
“That’s telling,” Roberts added. “These are things that play in October, having weapons at his disposal that he can deploy or use at any point in time.”
There are still holes in the former second-round draft pick’s thin big-league resume.
Knack doesn’t have the veteran experience of Buehler and Kershaw, who is not guaranteed to return in time for the playoffs but appears to be increasingly trending that way.
He hasn’t consistently shown overwhelming stuff, either, entering Wednesday with below-league-averages marks in whiff rate and fastball velocity.
His struggles against an actual postseason contender in the Braves was also troubling; an outing so poor that Knack said he did nothing but “angrily stew” on it over the last several days.
“I was obviously not happy with that one,” Knack said. “So I was just very angry, ready to bounce back from that.”
The way he did on Wednesday — in a game the Dodgers got home runs from Will Smith, Tommy Edman and Kiké Hernández, in addition to Shohei Ohtani’s 49th steal of the season, to lower their magic number for an NL West division title to seven — hinted that there could be more in the tank.
“I just like the confidence that he’s exuding on the mound,” Roberts said, in response to a question about Knack’s October prospects. “So yeah, when you look out, look forward, he’s certainly really in the mix.”
Rojas gets rest; Betts plays 2B
Shortstop Miguel Rojas was scratched from the Dodgers lineup Wednesday, but said it was only because of some lingering soreness in his left leg. Roberts said the club would reevaluate Rojas’ status Thursday.
At the Dodgers’ other middle infield position Wednesday, Mookie Betts got the start at second base, his first start back on the dirt since reprising his old right field role last month upon returning from a broken hand.
Roberts said it was only a temporary switch, one intended to give Betts a little rest — at least compared to the rigors of right field — amid a stretch of 10 straight games.
