The Dodgers are back home Friday night looking to build on a much-needed escape against St. Louis, but they’ll do it without two of the biggest names in the lineup.
Los Angeles opens a three-game set with the Washington Nationals at UNIQLO Field at Dodger Stadium after ending a rough stretch with a walk-off, two-run double from Teoscar Hernández on Thursday night. That win kept the Dodgers from being swept by the Cardinals and gave them a little breathing room after dropping six of their last nine.
“We needed it,” manager Dave Roberts said after Thursday’s game. “Obviously for seven innings, it didn’t look good at all.
Then we found a way to scratch one across. But a win’s a win, however it looks.”
The Nationals arrive playing well enough to keep themselves in the mix. Washington has won five of its last seven and is still hanging around the National League wild-card race, sitting 7.5 games behind the third and final spot. These two clubs already met once this season, with the Dodgers sweeping the three-game series from April 3-5.
Friday’s opener is a lefty-versus-lefty matchup, with Blake Snell starting for Los Angeles and Jackson Kent going for Washington. Snell has been a major lift since returning from midseason elbow surgery, going 2-0 with a 1.17 ERA and 31 strikeouts over 23 innings in four starts.
Kent, meanwhile, made his MLB debut on Aug. 12 against the Chicago Cubs and now has four big-league starts on his resume. He’s 1-2 with a 5.59 ERA and 17 strikeouts across 19.1 innings, though he’s coming off the sharpest outing of his young career after throwing seven innings of one-run ball with three strikeouts against the Miami Marlins.
The Dodgers will again be without Shohei Ohtani, who missed Thursday’s game while dealing with injuries to his knee, biceps and neck. Roberts made it clear before Thursday’s game that Ohtani won’t simply be run out there because of who he is.
“At the end of the day, he wants to be in there,” Roberts said before Thursday's game. “But I’m not going to just put him in there because of the name on the back of his jersey.”
The team has also said it does not expect Ohtani to land on the injured list. General manager Brandon Gomes said Thursday that the club has not seriously discussed that route.
“I think it’s just really hard to say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna knock something out in X amount of days,’” Gomes told reporters. “But l think not having Shohei in the lineup for 10 days, or whatever it would be, is something that we would prefer not to do, and it really hasn’t even been something that we’ve discussed.”
Freddie Freeman is also out, and Kiké Hernández is at first base in his place.
First pitch is set for 7:10 p.m. PT/10:10 p.m.
ET on Friday, Sept. 4.
The game will air on SportsNet LA and in the MLB app, with radio coverage on AM570 in English and KTNQ 1020 AM in Spanish.
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