The Dodgers were mostly without Shohei Ohtani, Andy Pages, and Roki Sasaki over the last month until the final week of the season. But they also saw an exciting debut by Josue De Paula and more excellent pitching en route to a strong September.
Sure the schedule was soft as butter, but the Dodgers did what they should have, winning 18 of 25 games to close out the regular season. It was a welcome sight after a ho-hum July and underwhelming August.
September numbers
18-7 record 131 runs scored (5.24 per game, 5th in MLB)
83 runs allowed (3.32 per game, 2nd in MLB) .697 pythagorean win percentage (17-8)
Mookie comes alive
During a second straight down year offensively, relative to his lofty career standards, started to find his way in mid-August. In September his bat was one of the best in baseball, hitting .337/.438/.674 with seven home runs and nine doubles, with 20 runs scored and 22 RBI. His 16 extra-base hits were his most since a sublime August 2023 during which Betts won National League player of the month.
Betts in September was second to Reds star shortstop Elly De La Cruz in FanGraphs WAR (1.9, to 2.0), and Betts ranked fourth in the majors during the month in OPS (1.112) and wRC+ (202).
Betts wasn’t the only one with a late-season turnaround. After getting near-replacement-level production from both corner outfielders for nearly five months, Teoscar Hernández (166 wRC+, 18 RBI) and Kyle Tucker (140 wRC+, six home runs) were among the Dodgers’ best hitters in September. If there’s a concern with Tucker, he had only five singles in 21 at-bats after fouling a ball off his right knee on September 19.
The team also got Will Smith back after nearly three months on the injured list, and the catcher was back to his All-Star self, hitting .290/.400/.548 with a 160 wRC+.
Alex Freeland in limited duty had a 133 wRC+, hitting .250/.413/.389.
Blowout wins
In that mediocre stretch in July and August, the Dodgers stopped blowing teams out, winning just four games by at least five runs during that 51-game stretch, two in each month. But in September the Dodgers had five blowout wins, one shy of most in the majors.
That’s more like the first half of the year, when the Dodgers had 25 blowout wins through the end of June, best in baseball. On the season, the Dodgers’ 34 blowout wins were tied for second-most with the New York Yankees, one shy of the Chicago Cubs
Freeman struggling
First baseman Freddie Freeman hit a three-run home run on September 2, part of a two-hit game in which he reached base five times. But after that, Freeman did not have another extra-base hit in 18 games and 77 plate appearances, hitting a feeble .167/.208/.167.
That home run on September 2 snapped a string of 47 full games and 196 plate appearances without a long ball, the longest drought of Freeman’s career. During that homerless stretch, Freeman was still reasonably productive, hitting .318/.362/.374 with 10 doubles. But that power disappeared over the last nearly four weeks, with Freeman also working through a knee injury and he sat four games and was designated hitter for another. That had Freeman looking forward to the five days the Dodgers have off between the regular season and Game 1 of the NLDS.
“I think we all know why it’s important,” Freeman last week said of the bye. “There’s a lot of guys limping toward the end, a lot of aches and pains this year.”
Welcome aboard
With Ohtani on the injured list, Dodgers top prospect Josue De Paula had a runway to play and impressed in his major league debut. His command of the strike zone was evident with 11 walks against only five strikeouts in 11 games, and he hit .323/.500/.581 with three doubles, a home run, and a triple.
De Paula the first Dodgers player to reach base at least half the time in a month of at least 40 plate appearances since Betts in August 2023. Those are the only two Dodgers to do so in the 2020s.
“Josue has been awesome. Injected some life and energy into our team as we got into September,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said Wednesday. “He handled himself and did as well as he could possibly do.”
The big four
The Dodgers’ biggest strength going into October is its starting rotation, and while there was a brief concern with Blake Snell leaving his September 16 start after only one inning as a precaution with left groin discomfort, the quartet of Tarik Skubal, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Snell, and Glasnow combined for a 2.76 ERA with 117 strikeouts and a, 30.3-percent strikeout rate in 98 innings in their 17 starts.
Emmet Sheehan was also great in his three appearances after getting called back up from Triple-A, allowing only one run in 17 innings, with 24 strikeouts and three walks.
Among the relievers, Alex Vesia allowed only one run in his 11 games and 10 1/3 innings with 15 strikeouts. And while posting his highest walk rate (13.5 percent) in a season since 2021, Vesia in September only walked one of his 35 batters faced.
Up next
The National League Division Series starts on Saturday at Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers will play either the Atlanta Braves of Philadelphia Phillies.
