Dodgers need to focus on one game at a time

The Dodgers have limited time to get their act together. Now is the time for more consistency

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What is the story about?

The old pitching adage is you’re only as good as your next outing, and that’s the mindset the entire Dodgers baseball team needs to have right now.

After being swept in Pittsburgh, the Dodgers need to head into Baltimore leaving that disaster of a series behind.

Ironically, in Baltimore, they will face the team that has allowed them to stay where they were in the standings despite that sweep. The Orioles did them a big ol’ favor and swept the Padres in San Diego.

With the Orioles sitting at 64-76, the Dodgers

are facing another team in which it should be easier for them to beat. But as shown in many previous series against such teams, they don’t always seem to do that. They mostly seem to get up to play tougher teams, so yay for not playing bad teams in the playoffs?

As an aside, I did attend Wednesday’s game in Pittsburgh. I was watching the players in the dugout as well as on the field, and there seems to be a lack of spark with them right now. It could be they’re all just fighting through the end-of-season tiredness, or it could be that more of them are under the weather than they were letting on.

Either way, they really need to not wait much longer to get consistent play going. San Diego is in Colorado this weekend, and figure to not be swept by the Rockies.

On Friday night, the Dodgers will send Tyler Glasnow to the mound. Glasnow pitched well in his last outing allowing three earned runs over seven innings, with those three runs not coming until the seventh inning. Glasnow has not pitched in Camden Yards since 2023 when he was with the Tampa Bay Rays.

The Dodgers will face Dean Kremer, a right-handed pitcher that they had drafted in the 14th round in the 2016 draft. Kremer sits at 9-10 on the season with a 4.52 ERA.

However, over his last three outings, Kremer has a 7.80 ERA and most notably allowed seven earned in three innings against the San Francisco Giants back on August 29th. He allowed six earned runs in five innings to the Houston Astros the outing before that.

Kremer’s recent struggles and the fact that he has difficulty against left-handed power should make him a prime target for Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman to be able to feast off of his pitching. Kremer doesn’t strike out a lot, so if the Dodgers stay disciplined, they should be able to have success against him.

I honestly don’t know what to expect this series. The Dodgers showed life, finally, in the top of the ninth in Thursday’s game. But as stated the Orioles are coming off of a sweep of a really good team.

I am fond of saying that this team is too good to be this bad, and things always revert to the norm sooner or later. They’ve always done it in the past; this time feels like it might be one where they don’t.