Dodgers Stumbling Before All-Star Break, Face the Tigers

Watch Dodgers Stumbling Before All-Star Break, Face the Tigers - SportsGrid on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00The World Series favorites, the L.A. Dodgers, might go stumbling into the all-star break.

00:09Swept this week in Philadelphia, and resoundingly so, by the Phils. L.A. was the underdog in

00:16all three games at the bank, as you might expect, against the Phils. They lost all three,

00:20eight times still only this year for the Dodgers, booked as an underdog in just two and six

00:26straight up. But an underdog in Detroit? That can only mean one thing. Tarek Skuble is on

00:33the bump for the Tigers. Detroit's won eight of its last 11 games as well. Donnie, will

00:40the Dodgers bounce back, or is this the worst spot you could hope to kind of show some resilience

00:46against the American League's Cy Young frontrunner?

00:48Yeah, man, on the road, licking your wounds after leaving Philadelphia and saying, all

00:52right, whew, we'll get the big maple on the mound. Let's see what we can do against the

00:54lowly Detroit Tigers. And then you get Tarek Skuble winning maybe the best pitcher of Major

00:59League Baseball to count to you. That's not going to be great. If you just take a look

01:03at numbers, first of all, we understand how talented that lineup is for the Dodgers, one

01:06through nine, still without Mookie Betts. It's much more talented than the Detroit Tigers.

01:10But you could argue that same thing yesterday. The Tigers weren't as talented as the plate

01:14of going up against the Guardians. Still won the game. Why? Because the pitcher is so much

01:17better on the mound. You take a look at Tarek Skuble this year, and if we're just going

01:21on home starts alone, since once again, the game is in Detroit, he's been fantastic. How

01:25about this? A 1.74 ERA at home through 51 and two-thirds innings, a 3.05 XFIP, so a

01:33little bit higher, but still, it's in that very good grade. You flip it over to Paxton,

01:37one of those guys you've heard me talk about quite a bit this year. Sometimes you just

01:40take a look at that ERA and say to yourself, well, he should be pretty good. But the XFIP

01:44numbers and the analytical numbers are sky high. Why? Walks too many batters, doesn't

01:48strike out enough, and gives up fly balls. That's a recipe for disaster. Even though

01:52that Detroit lineup is not very good against left-handed pitching, I still think Detroit

01:56wins this game. But more importantly, I think we stay under the total in this game. A few

02:01runs out of Detroit could be enough to beat the mighty Dodger bats here. So there you go.