Six scoreless innings from Blake Snell gave the Dodgers exactly the kind of outing any club would welcome.
On paper, it looked like a performance worth applauding.
Snell, however, framed it more cautiously, calling the start a “good starting point.”
“I think I can be way better,” Snell said.
As Snell reflected on his work in the Dodgers’ 5-3 win over the Washington Nationals on Saturday night, his tone made clear that satisfaction had not yet arrived. The results were strong, but in his view, his form still had another level to reach.
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He isn’t alone.
The starters who will comprise the Dodgers’ postseason rotation know that when the playoffs start, they will have to pitch better than they have. Their team’s inconsistent offense will once again give them little margin for error, perhaps even less than last year with Shohei Ohtani dealing with multiple injuries.
If October marks the start of the baseball season in Los Angeles, September is spring training. The pitchers have three weeks to prepare for the starts that will define their seasons, or perhaps even careers. Up next will be Tyler Glasnow, who pitches Saturday in only his third start since returning from a 3 ½-month absence that was forced on him by back spasms.
The night before Snell beat the Nationals, Tarik Skubal was flabbergasted by his stat line in his start against the St. Louis Cardinals: 5 ⅓ innings, two runs, 10 hits, all of them singles.
“I mean, 10 singles,” said Skubal, taking solace in how he didn’t give up any extra-base hits.
Skubal said he threw the ball well, pointing to how pitches that missed by a couple of inches to either side radically transformed certain at-bats.
“In my eyes,” Skubal said, “that’s executing a pitch.”
Which isn’t to say he Skubal viewed himself entirely as a victim of dumb luck.
“I’ve gotta continue to make pitches and continue to suppress contact and try and get misses when I can,” he said.
The start was the sixth for Skubal since his trade from the Detroit Tigers. He has pitched more than six innings only once for the Dodgers, with whom he is 1-2 with a 3.03 earned-run average.
“I know we haven’t seen the best of him yet,” manager Dave Roberts said.
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The Dodgers saw the best of Yoshinobu Yamamoto on Wednesday – for five innings.
Facing the Cardinals, Yamamoto had a no-hitter through five innings that was broken up in the sixth on a leadoff single by José Fermín. Two batters later, Yamamoto gave up a home run to Thomas Saggese.
In the next inning, Yamamoto gave up a leadoff double to Jordan Walker, which was followed by a home run by Leo Bernal.
“When I went into the stretch, my control was really bad,” Yamamoto said in Japanese.
He departed the game with a 5-4 lead, which the bullpen failed to protect. The Dodgers lost the game in extra innings.
Yamamoto was frustrated, as he thought it was inexcusable to lose a game in which the Dodgers’ slumping offense scored five runs.
“They scored for me, and it was a game we could have won if I’d held the other team,” Yamamoto said.
Yamamoto has made 25 starts, and his numbers are better than they were last year at the same stage, as he has a 2.67 ERA in 165 innings. Through his first 25 starts last year, he had a 2.90 ERA in 139 ⅔ innings.
Yamamoto’s personal trainer, Osamu Yada, said Yamamoto should start hitting his stride in the second half of the month, which should position him to perform as well, if not better, in the playoffs than he did last year when he was the most valuable player of the World Series.
As for Snell, he said he had to be more efficient.
His six-inning effort was an inning longer than his previous start, but he continued to call on himself to pitch deeper into the game.
“Going six is cool, and it’s a good starting point,” Snell said. “I really want to go seven, eight. I want to get to nine.”
Snell, who pitched for only the fifth time since he returned from an early-season elbow operation, threw 100 pitches.
“I just can’t be walking guys that I know I can get out. Just gotta get ahead, quit trying to be so perfect and just attack it.”
That’s what Snell did when he pitched seven shutout innings against the Cincinnati Reds in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series last year. That’s what he did when he blanked the Milwaukee Brewers over eight innings in the opening game of the National League Championship Series.
Snell knows where he wants to be when the playoffs open. He has three more regular-season starts to get there.