Just about everything worked for the Dodgers to open their homestand on Monday night, with Andy Pages hitting two of the team’s three home runs in 7-0 win. But the last number there was notable, too.
Emmet Sheehan struck out at least one batter in each of his career-high seven innings, with 10 in total. It was the 12th start of seven innings by a Dodgers pitcher this season. Only three of them also included double-digit strikeouts. Yoshinobu Yamamoto struck out 10 in seven scoreless innings on April
18 in Texas, and Tyler Glasnow fanned 12 with one run allowed in seven innings against the Twins on July 23.
But Sheehan on Monday allowed only two hits and a walk, giving him a game score of 82, tied for the highest by a Dodgers pitcher this season.
Bill James came up with the idea of game score in the 1980s as a way to measure starts, with this formula:
- Start with 50 points
- 1 point for each out recorded
- 2 points for each completed inning after the fourth
- 1 point for each strikeout
- Subtract 2 points for each hit
- Subtract 4 points for each earned run
- Subtract 2 points for each unearned run
- Subtract 1 point for each walk
Yamamoto also had an 82 game score on May 20 against the Diamondbacks, with one hit and two walks allowed with nine strikeouts in seven scoreless innings. Sheehan and Yamamoto have the only two Dodgers game scores of at least 80 this season. The Yamamoto start against the Rangers — out-dueling Jacob deGrom — was 77, and Glasnow’s dozen strikeouts against the Twins produced a 78 game score.
In the previous two seasons, the Dodgers only had three game scores of at least 82 — Gavin Stone’s shutout against the White Sox last June scored an 86, Glasnow’s 14-strikeout game in Minnesota last April was an 85, and Clayton Kershaw in April 2023 against the Cardinals had an 82 game score.
Sheehan had a pair of bulk relief outings in July but for the most part has been in an extended run in the rotation for two months. Overall he’s doing quite well, with a 3.56 ERA on the season with 54 strikeouts (27.6 percent) and 16 walks in 48 innings. Coupled with the return of Blake Snell and Shohei Ohtani getting more stretched out, August has been the most stable the now-six-deep Dodgers rotation has been all season.
Dodgers starters this month lead the majors with a 26.5-percent strikeout rate, which is a marked improvement from earlier this season:
Dodgers rotation strikeout rate
- March/April: 23.9 percent (5th in MLB)
- May: 23.1 percent (9th)
- June: 19.1 percent (26th)
- July: 24 percent (7th)
- August: 26.5 percent (1st)
Dodgers starters in August have a 3.40 ERA and are seventh in the majors averaging 5.52 innings per start. Through the end of July, Dodgers starters had a 4.24 ERA and were dead last in innings pitched, averaging only 4.55 innings. After literally running out of starting pitchers in each of the last four Octobers, the Dodgers have a strong base this year to start from over the next two months.
