The Dodgers are kind of good
We have arrived. It’s Opening Day. This has been, by a large margin, the least excited St. Louis has been for Opening Day in a long time. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m in the wrong corners of the internet. I’ve never seen a Cardinals team be relatively well-positioned to win the division and have fans carry such little hope for the season. I get it and I don’t get it at the same time.
But put your pessimism at the door today. Today, the Cardinals have the chance to be undefeated. They have the chance to surprise. Anything can happen, and for today and possibly today only, anything can happen means anything good can happen. We’re supposed to be excited for baseball. We’re supposed to enjoy watching baseball.
Many of us will see Victor Scott 11 run down a ball for the first time. We may see Masyn Winn turn an infield single into a surprising out with a three-digit throw. We may see Nolan Arenado make the 10,000th web gem of his career. Nolan Gorman to smash his first of many homers to come. For Jordan Walker to scare the living daylights out of an opposing pitcher when the ball brushes past his head.
Baseball is all about when you face a team more than it is about who you face. Last year, the Cardinals got swept by the Dodgers at the end of April. Two and a half weeks later, the Cardinals won three of four games against the Dodgers. The Cardinals’ bats were alive in that second series. They didn’t even pitch well. They allowed at least 5 runs in every game. The Cardinals’ offense has that kind of potential. (They had good starting pitchers in May too: that series included Julio Urias, Tony Gonsolin, and Clayton Kershaw.)
The moment may get just a little bit too big for Tyler Glasnow today and the Cardinals may take advantage. We should know that players struggle with new teams and large expectations sometimes (both Arenado and Goldschmidt). Yoshinobu Yamamoto may need an adjustment period before he figures the MLB ball and MLB hitters. Maybe the Dodgers’ bats run cold. Every team has hot and cold stretches. Maybe this is the right time of the year to face the Dodgers.
The Dodgers’ bats are excellent. Mookie Betts leads off, and he had a pretty good argument to win MVP, he just ran into a guy with fun counting stats. Newly acquired Shohei Ohtani, while he’s still here anyway, follows him. And they still have Freddie Freeman. And that’s just the first inning. It’s a relief to face Will Smith and Max Muncy, pretty good hitters themselves.
But they have decided to put Mookie Betts at SS, which seems like a pretty bad idea to me. He was shaky in the first two games, and with the limited sample we have, he was -2 outs above average at SS in 98 innings last season, which is horrible. Max Muncy, below average fielder himself, committed two costly errors in the second game. Teoscar Hernandez is a below average LF. Basically hit to the left side, I wouldn’t expect anyone to be a good defender there.
On the flip side, sort of, are the all-defense players, which is a weird label to place on two people who were good hitters last year. But James Outman’s offensive numbers look very fluky to me – he had a .344 wOBA and .325 xwOBA with a .343 BABIP and 31.9 K%. And Jason Heyward’s definitely were. ZiPS still sees him as a (slightly) below average hitter. You can throw Gavin Lux at 2B in this group as well. The weakest hitter is still supposed to surpass a 90 wRC+, so you know.
Their bullpen is, well not as dominant as you’d expect? I’m sure it’ll be good. Evan Phillips is their closer and you don’t want to face him (2.05 ERA/3.37 xFIP in 2023). Old friend Joe Kelly runs very hot and cold, like any reliever, though he struck out 35.7% of hitters last year. They seemingly discovered a new gear for 36-year-old Ryan Braiser. We are lucky enough to witness one of the 20 innings Daniel Hudson will pitch, if he’s not toast at this point (he’s thrown 27 innings combined last two seasons). Alex Vesia is fine. Then a trio of converted starters: Ryan Yarbrough, Michael Grove, Kyle Hurt. Hurt could be elite, Yarbrough is clearly just there to eat innings, and Grove is somewhere in between.
Thursday – 3:10 PM
Miles Mikolas (4.78 ERA/4.27 FIP/4.76 xFIP) vs. Tyler Glasnow (3.53 ERA/2.91 FIP/2.75 xFIP)
I did not know Mikolas had a great spring training and the only reason I know that is because Fangraphs lists spring training stats on their page now. I was under the impression everyone had an awful spring training. Admittedly faith in Mikolas requires you believe, as he has actually stated, that he treated the 2nd half last year as a sort of spring training to work on his stuff. So his stats may look worse than they should.
Glasnow, well, the big knock on Glasnow is his health. And that’s not very useful when he’s healthy. Like I said before, hopefully Glasnow, in trying to make a big impression for his new team, struggles against the Cardinals and hopefully the Cardinals can take advantage of that.
Friday – 9:10 PM
Zack Thompson (4.48 ERA/3.87 FIP/3.83 xFIP) vs. Bobby Miller (3.76 ERA/3.51 FIP/3.75 xFIP)
I’m not trying to start a fight, but it is amusing to me that some people didn’t like the fact that Thompson wasn’t made the fifth starter so the Cardinals could get two better pitchers instead of three pitchers, and that Thompson would be blocked. And he’s starting the 2nd game of the season. Let’s hope Thompson forces his way into a permanent spot in the rotation. He’s really getting thrown into the fire here, so he’d really earn it.
Miller will probably fly under the radar in the Dodgers’ rotation, both because he doesn’t have the track record and well, he’s just not as good as Glasnow and Yamamoto are expected to be. But it would not be totally shocking if he outpitched Yamamoto in 2024 in my opinion.
Saturday – 8:10 PM
Lance Lynn (5.73 ERA/5.53 FIP/4.50 xFIP) vs. Yoshinobu Yamamoto (45.00 ERA/7.78 FIP/8.43 xFIP)
Yeah I usually don’t share year of stats until I get a sample of games that I’m happy with, but A) it’s funny sharing those stats against the Padres and B) I don’t actually have any other MLB data to use. There may genuinely be an adjustment period for him. Kodai Senga ended up with a good season, but in his first month, he walked everyone. He had a 5.10 FIP and 15.6 BB%.
Lynn well, I have to admit I don’t love the idea of a homer-happy guy who we are counting on to get neutral home run luck facing a team where you don’t need to be particularly unlucky to allow a bunch of home runs. So that theory will get immediately tested, although obviously one game against the best offense in baseball is going to make most pitchers’ numbers look bad. That said, if he has a good game against them, I am going to be super optimistic about Lynn’s 2024, which is definitely not how you’re supposed to treat one-game samples.
Sunday – 6:00 PM
Steven Matz (3.86 ERA/3.75 FIP/3.96 xFIP) vs. Gavin Stone (9.00 ERA/6.64 FIP/5.15 xFIP)
Not to put too much pressure on you Matz, but this is by far the most winnable game. Stone’s projections aren’t actually that bad and he had a good spring, but even accounting for that, he’s definitely the worst pitcher in this series. And it’s not that close. Those stats were last year’s stats in 31 innings and some of it was in the bullpen, so he pitched genuinely bad last year. And if there’s one thing I don’t trust projections on – aside from defense, it’s for pitchers who haven’t actually done it at the MLB level yet.
Matz, well, when he’s on, he’s probably in the running for the Cards’ best pitcher, and when he’s not, he’s probably in the running for the Cardinals’ worst pitcher. Let’s hope it takes him quicker than last year to be on.
And there you have it. I used to do predictions, when last season started going poorly, I stopped and there is no chance I’m bringing it back for this Dodgers series, that’s just asking for trouble.