Editor’s note: This is the Tuesday, June 20, 2023 edition of the “Game Day with Kevin Modesti” newsletter. To receive the newsletter in your inbox, sign up here.
Good morning. It’s hard to get clear pictures of where the Angels and Dodgers are headed this season, but we’ll at least get blurry snapshots of where the teams are right now when they play the first Freeway Series of 2023 tonight and Wednesday in Anaheim.
First, other sports news: With anticipation building for Thursday’s NBA draft, this first-round forecast tries to sort out who’ll go No. 2 after Victor Wembanyama and who the Lakers and Clippers will get. The Sparks, 11th in the 12-team WNBA last year, are sixth in reporter John W. Davis’ team rankings about one-quarter of the way through this season; they host Minnesota (10th) tonight. Jon Wilner, at the Bay Area News Group, updated his pre-pre-pre-season men’s college basketball rankings, moving Kansas to No. 1, USC up to No. 8 (thanks to adding Bronny James and Isaiah Collier) and UCLA down to No. 25 (after “massive personnel losses”). And the Coachella Valley Firebirds beat the Hershey Bears 5-2 at Acrisure Arena in Thousand Palms, in Riverside County, to force Game 7 Wednesday in the American Hockey League’s Calder Cup Final.
The L.A. area’s ballclubs meet for a two-game series that shapes up as a split, with the Dodgers starting Clayton Kershaw tonight and the Angels starting Shohei Ohtani tomorrow.
The teams are going in opposite directions after the Angels finished a strong trip with home runs by Ohtani and Mike Trout in a win over the Royals while the Dodgers were being embarrassed by the Giants in a three-game sweep.
The Angels have won 11 of their past 14 games to rise from .500 to 41-33 and from third place to second, and the Dodgers have lost 10 of 14 to go from a season-best 12 games over .500 to 39-33 and from first place to third.
It’s the first time since 2014 that the Angels have a better record than the Dodgers going into a Freeway Series. In the 2014 Freeway Series opener, a home run by Josh Hamilton helped the Angels’ Garrett Richards beat the Dodgers’ Zack Greinke. So it feels like a long time ago.
Back in the present, summer doesn’t begin until tomorrow, and Jim Alexander’s column today (“Angels and Dodgers have switched places”) makes no predictions about where the teams will be in the fall.
Jim does write, correctly, that “maybe those assumptions about who’s a seller and who’s a buyer at the trade deadline (Aug. 1) have been knocked askew.”
But beyond that, it’s not as simple as watching a lot go right for the Angels and a lot go wrong for the Dodgers and concluding that this is the new reality. Those snapshots mentioned above might resemble diet-ad photos. Are they the “before” or “after” pictures?
Injuries and disappointing performances have hurt the Dodgers worse than the Angels, L.A. needing more than the upcoming return of Julio Urias and Daniel Hudson to rescue its pitching staff while L.A.-of-Anaheim has survived Anthony Rendon’s injuries and Logan O’Hoppe’s loss for four to six months because of Matt Thaiss’ catching and hitting.
Lineup changes have proven to be offensive upgrades for the Angels (Thaiss, Zach Neto, Brandon Drury, Hunter Renfroe), not so much for the Dodgers (yes for James Outman and J.D. Martinez, no for Julio Vargas and Miguel Rojas).
As Angels beat writer Jeff Fletcher pointed out on Twitter, numbers suggest that the hitters actually might improve over the rest of the season.
Interacting with readers, Fletcher wrote that “the Angels still have a lot of room to be better than they have been, which should be encouraging because they’re doing pretty well right now.”
Pretty well indeed. The Angels have a better record than the Dodgers, have been better this month, and look a hair better in the playoff races (Angels are the No. 2 wild card in the American League right now, Dodgers No. 3 wild card in the National League).
And yet: With the regular-season schedule’s midpoint coming up next week, the Dodgers are better than the Angels in run difference, in Baseball-Reference.com’s simple rating system (SRS), in records against teams above .500, in Fangraphs.com’s full-season won-lost projections and playoff chance projections, and in the minds of World Series futures bettors (see Between the Lines below).
Is this the Angels’ moment? Is this the Angels’ year?
We’ll see about the former, and maybe get a clearer picture of the latter, the next two nights.
TODAY
• Dodgers have beaten the Angels six times in a row going into the teams’ first meeting of 2023 (7:05 p.m., SNLA, BSW, TBS).
• Sparks are 0-2 against Minnesota this season as they host the Lynx at Crypto.com Arena (7 p.m., SPSN, CBSSN). Sparks update.
BETWEEN THE LINES
Despite the teams’ recent records, the Dodgers remain stronger World Series contenders than the Angels in the minds of oddsmakers and gamblers. The Dodgers are third (behind the Braves and Rays) in championship futures betting at odds ranging from +440 to +650, while the Angels are 13th at +3000 to +4000. Source: VegasInsider.com.
280 CHARACTERS
“Imagine a golf story making you cry? That’s Wyndham Clark’s — told by the pro @vcsbobbuttitta: ‘My mom was so positive and such a motivator. She’d be crying tears of joy. She called me winner when I was little, she would just say, “I love you, Winner.”‘“ — Columnist Mirjam Swanson (@MirjamSwanson) after reading Bob Buttitta’s coverage of Sunday’s final round of the U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club.
1,000 WORDS
Dirty work: The Giants’ Mike Yastrzemski slides home to score the tying run on a sacrifice fly in the ninth inning, before hitting a home run in the 10th to beat the Padres 7-4 last night in San Francisco. Photo is by Jeff Chiu for AP.
YOUR TURN
Thanks for reading. Send suggestions, comments and questions by email at kmodesti@scng.com and via Twitter @KevinModesti.
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