pitches from the Dodger Stadium mound more than 3 1/2 hours before first pitch Saturday, with a delegation including manager Dave Roberts and president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman watching closely. Urías went on the injured list May 20 with a hamstring strain, and after passing Saturday’s test he’s scheduled to throw a simulated game Tuesday in Cincinnati and could be activated next weekend.
Roberts, naturally, accentuated the positive Saturday afternoon, suggesting that injured list stint could be considered a break, maybe a subtle form of load management. (Then again, the Dodgers are notorious for creating such, er, breaks with players who maybe aren’t as hurt.)
“I think if you look at the last few years with a lot of our pitchers, they’ve kind of had a little reset or a break or a blow, cut into the season,” Roberts said. “And I do think that this two-week, three-week situation will reset him and he’ll be able to finish the rest of the season strong.”
That’s one pitcher scheduled to return soon, at least. Dustin May, Daniel Hudson and Walker Buehler are each on the 60-day IL, as are Ryan Pepiot and Blake Treinen, and by all accounts Hudson might be the closest to coming back, which would help shore up a bullpen that has regressed this season.
In related news, Phil Bickford went on the 15-day IL on Saturday, and no, the injury wasn’t listed as “bruised ERA.” Good guess, though.
The other development
Forget, for the moment, the two booming home runs that shortstop Jake Bauers slammed off Michael Grove, even though they accounted for two-thirds of New York’s offense in Saturday’s 6-3 Yankee victory.
Grove, along with Sunday starter Bobby Miller, is among the young Dodger pitchers asked to assume additional responsibility because of that crowded injured list. Grove was making his first start back from his own IL stint, a little more than five weeks because of a groin strain.
And, well, take away those two bombs — an 86.8-mph slider on a 1-1 pitch that Bauers hit 414 feet into the right field pavilion in the second, and a 95.6 mph four-seamer that he hit 409 feet to right field in the fourth — and you can make the case that Grove acquitted himself well.
Of his 83 pitches in five innings, 59 were strikes. He allowed only two hits besides the home runs, had three 1-2-3 innings and struck out the side surrounding Bauers’ first homer. Significantly, he averaged 96.4 mph with his four-seam fastball, touching 98 once, which was several mph above his average velocity for his first four starts before getting hurt.
Some of that, Grove said, came from some mechanical tweaks he worked on while on the IL, “just some things I needed to get back to ... Really, just evaluating my delivery and how to use my legs a little bit better. It was nothing crazy, just a small tweak, but it let me get behind the baseball a little bit better.”
Said Roberts: “They didn’t take a lot of good swings against him, and yeah, there wasn’t much stress. He just made a couple of (bad) pitches to Bauers, but outside of that, really good. I think he’s got a lot of confidence, and you know, we’ll look forward to him making his next one.”
See, the Dodgers’ pitching laboratory is still functional, but a pitcher still has to have that velocity in him. The lack of success in turning Noah Syndegaard around could be largely the case of someone still considering himself a power pitcher when he really isn’t any more.
Syndergaard is scheduled to start Wednesday in Cincinnati. Beyond that, who knows? At this point it seems to make more sense for the Dodgers to end that experiment and go all in with the kids, much as they have with Miguel Vargas and James Outman in their everyday lineups.
The youngsters may struggle, but they’ll learn and be better for it. So will their team.
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