LOS ANGELES — Dodgers catcher Will Smith did not start either of the final two games of the weekend series against the Chicago Cubs, while dealing with back tightness.
“He could play if he needed to, but we felt it was smart to give him an extra day, and I guess put him into the day-to-day category,” manager Dave Roberts said Sunday, while adding that he didn’t think Smith would require an injured list stint. “Even talking to the training staff, it’s something that he could have played last night, he probably could have played today. But we didn’t want to push it.”
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Roberts first mentioned the back tightness for Smith on Saturday, noting that the original plan was for Smith to start two of the three games against the Cubs, and it was just a matter of when to fit in the Dalton Rushing start this series.
Smith hit a three-run home run on Friday night, and the three-time All-Star is hitting .266/.337/.392 with three home runs and a 106 wRC+. The Dodgers plan to keep monitoring Smith, but it doesn’t hurt having Rushing in reserve. Rushing in his second major league campaign is off to a blazing start, hitting .385/.455/.974 with a 284 wRC+ and seven home runs in only 44 plate appearances. Rushing has hit so well, he’s even started a game each at designated hitter and first base when the need arose.
“My hope is that he’s in there [Monday],” Roberts said of Smith, ”But to have Dalton Rushing going how he’s going, it just seems like only downside to push him right now.“
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A few more looks at Roki Sasaki’s start and win on Saturday. First from Katie Woo at The Athletic, on Sasaki’s pitch repertoire:
He wanted to throw his splitter harder, he told pitching coaches Mark Prior and Connor McGuiness, similar to how he threw the pitch in Japan. After months of inconsistency, Sasaki finally felt his delivery was in a good enough place to make the change. McGuiness made a couple of tweaks — the biggest one being a slight grip adjustment— and the two coaches gave Sasaki the all clear to try the pitch in his bullpen session in San Francisco.
“The first one was disgusting,” Prior said. “So we were like, yeah, let’s do that.”
Dylan Hernández at the California Post looked back to Sasaki’s early days in Japan and was left wanting in the current version:
“I think that my No. 1 problem hasn’t been my fastball but rather the percentage of forkballs I’ve been able to throw over the plate,” Sasaki said in Japanese.
By reducing the vertical break of the pitch, Sasaki made it easier to control — but also not as lethal.
Ayako Oikawa at MLB.com talked to several major leaguers about their various methods for breaking in their gloves.
Read the full article here
