The Dodgers are back home for their final homestand of June, so let’s look at some news and notes from over the weekend.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto taking a perfect game into the eighth inning was the highlight of the road trip, and the right-hander has allowed only four runs in 35 2/3 innings over his last five starts. Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register talked with pitching coach Mark Prior and others about Yamamoto:
“He can attack the plate on both sides from ball-to-strike better than anybody I’ve
ever seen. He has that ability to do that when he’s on,” Prior said. “That makes it tough on hitters. You don’t know if the ball is coming at them, from the right side or the left side, and going in.
“That’s what makes him special. It’s not just the amount of pitches. It’s the ability to throw them in four different quadrants and have pretty good execution and efficiency with it. That’s what makes him special.”
Andy Pages is thriving on the field this season, but what most folks don’t see is the toll taken by being separated by most of his family. Pages lives in the United States with his wife, but his parents and sister are still in Cuba. Liana Handler at the Los Angeles Times wrote about how strained relations between Cuba and the U.S. prevent both Pages from visiting the rest of his family or bringing them from Cuba to be with him here:
“I haven’t found any way that gives me that tranquility and peace,” he told The Times in Spanish two weeks ago. “Because the way things are there, what’s always on your mind is that it could happen. Anything, anytime. And I have all my family in Cuba. So, you have to live with that worry all the time.”
Mookie Betts had three hits on Saturday in Chicago and homered on Sunday, positive signs in what has been a brutal start to his season offensively, hitting just .204/.267/.374 with a 78 wRC+. Fabian Ardaya at The Athletic looked at some underlying numbers to see what’s working and what isn’t for Betts:
Betts’ bat-to-ball skills are intact. His whiff rates (96th percentile) and strikeout rate (91st percentile) continue to be among the league’s best, and he is regularly hitting the ball on a line. He is keeping the ball off the ground just as he did in his last truly elite offensive season in 2023.
It just hasn’t always been the right type of contact in the air. His percentage of pulled fly balls (21 percent, entering Sunday) is the lowest he’s had in a season since 2019. Most of that contact is going up the middle …
