All the Dodgers needed to do to fix their early offensive woes was take a trip out to America’s capitol.
After scoring a combined seven runs in three games against the Cleveland Guardians, the Dodgers offense has woken up from its slumber in a thunderous manner. Five Dodgers hit home runs on Friday, which featured Shohei Ohtani’s and Kyle Tucker’s first of the year, and they have scored 23 runs over 18 innings of offense against the Washington Nationals. Leading the charge down at the seven spot for Saturday’s contest was Andy Pages, and he is continuing to light the baseball world on fire.
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Pages is now slashing .500/.516/.833 with a team-leading three home runs and 10 RBI, having whiffed just 10 times compared to his 15 hits on the season, leading the league in that category. Amidst all the future Hall of Fame names within the starting lineup, it is the Dodgers’ 25-year-old budding center fielder that has ignited the rest of the offense.
Both Dodgers manager Dave Roberts and Nationals manager Blake Butera praised Pages for his outstanding start to the season, with the former noting how much more complete of a hitter he has become, per Sonja Chen of MLB.com.
“He’s controlling the zone, he’s fighting when he gets two strikes, he is hitting to all fields,” manager Dave Roberts said. “Right now, he’s showing he’s a complete hitter.”
“He’s the best hitter on the planet right now, it seems like,” Nationals manager Blake Butera said.
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Freddie Freeman has broken out of his early season slumber in a big way over the past two games against Washington, as he now has two doubles, a home run and five RBI so far. With his two doubles on Saturday, he now has eclipsed the 550 doubles plateau and passed his former Atlanta Braves teammate and mentor Chipper Jones for 32nd on the all-time doubles list.
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Freeman reflected on reaching yet another milestone in his career while also remarking about Jones’ impact on him during the early stages of his career in Atlanta, per Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register.
“As I’ve gotten older, I do appreciate what I’ve been able to accomplish,” Freeman said of his latest milestone. “Hopefully, I still have a lot more in my future. But 550 is pretty cool.
“I’m sure (Jones) will respond that he’s still got me in homers. But Chipper has meant a lot to me, my approach … There’s just a lot that he taught me when I first came up. He definitely meant a lot to me early on, for sure.”
Tyler Glasnow joins Yoshinobu Yamamoto as the only Dodgers starting pitchers to toss two consecutive quality starts to begin the season, as the right-hander tossed another six innings of two-run ball, this time striking out nine Nationals hitters on 101 pitches while securing his first win of the season.
Glasnow spoke with Kirsten Watson of SportsNet LA about his most recent start and how he feels that he’s building upon every start, as he has now been given the opportunity to have his pitch count touch triple digits.
“I think I just feel good, and I think each start I’m trying to take that into the next week and build off of it. I think this last start and this start were pretty consistent, so I’m just trying to keep it going.”