Daily Archives: April 4, 2017

Apr 04

Game 2, 2017

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Padres at Dodgers, 7:10PM PT, TV: SPNLA, FSSD

The visiting Padres send lefty Clayton Richard to the mound in hopes he’ll continue pitching as well as he did over the last two months of last season, when he induced ground balls at a 64 percent clip. The Dodgers hope Kenta Maeda does as well in his first start of 2017 as he did in his major league debut in Game Three of last season; he shut out the Padres for six innings and hit a home run. The Dodgers say he’s added a cutter to his repertoire this year.

A couple of interesting things about the Dodgers pitcher:

Maeda tossed three perfect frames and struck out four Angels in his Spring Training finale on Thursday. He needed just 29 pitches. In five spring starts, Maeda posted a 3.00 ERA and a .182 batting average against.

Among pitchers who gave up at least 300 batted balls last season, Maeda led the way by allowing just 28.2 percent to be hit with an exit velocity of 95 mph or harder. Teammate Clayton Kershaw was fourth in that category, at 31.0 percent.

Lineup when available.


Let the platooning begin. Joc sits against a lefty, Kiké plays. Toles sits against lefties too? I dunno. Certainly against this one.