The Los Angeles Dodgers are starting their first road trip of this season, aside from that little sojourn to Korea. Does that actually count as a road trip?
Regardless, this one is a little six game spin through the north side of Chicago and the Twin Cities.
First up is a three game set against the Cubs, where the friendly confines of Wrigley Field may not be so friendly, temperature wise. All three games are mid afternoon games, local time, and no day while they’re there is it supposed to be above 50°. Sunday looks like there is rain forecast for most of the day.
The Dodgers will say hi to old friends Cody Bellinger and Michael Busch, both in the lineup Friday. So far the Cubs are 4-2 on the season.
Pitching matchups against the Cubs are Friday, birthday boy Bobby Miller goes against Kyle Hendricks; Saturday will be Yoshinobu Yamamoto vs Jordan Wicks; and Sunday will be Gavin Stone and Shota Imanaga.
Both Wicks and Imanaga are lefties, and Imanaga looked incredibly sharp in his Major League debut, going 6.0 innings, striking out nine and allowing no runs. Those two games will probably see Miguel Rojas at short and Mookie Betts over at second base.
We will see if Mookie continues the torrid pace with which he has started the season. He leads the entire Majors in average, homers, RBI, runs, OBP, OPS, slugging, hits, and walks. He does have a two game lead over most other players, but still he has been pretty dang impressive.
Now that Shohei Ohtani has gotten over the speed bump and hit his first home run in Dodgers blue, one can hope that he has unlocked his bat and show a little more of the offense that Dodger fans expect from him.
Once the Cubs series is over the Dodgers will go north to Minneapolis to take on the Twins. The weather looks to be a little better, with Wednesday being the gem, about 65° and sunny at game time.
Pitching matchups for those games are not yet posted, but if the Dodgers continue on what they had been doing, it could be James Paxton, a bullpen game, and then Tyler Glasnow.
In injury news, Jason Heyward is still feeling ill effects from his back pain, although his isn’t too worried about it. He said it was stiffening up on days he was coming off the bench, and he and the team decided an IL stint would be a good precaution.
Walker Buehler will make his second rehab start on Saturday. He is expected to throw between 65-70 pitches. The original expectation was four rehab starts for Buehler.
Blake Treinen has been throwing, but is still weeks away from rejoining the bullpen. He is now working on getting his stamina up from so much time off.