Dodger Details: Ben Casparius' new role, star check-ins and Hyeseong Kim vs. lefties

New York Times

a day ago

SAN DIEGO — Ben Casparius has had to learn to keep things fluid. He'd never been through a reliever's routine until this spring training, but made his first Opening Day roster with the Los Angeles Dodgers as the team's long man. He's become the team's most valuable arm not named Yoshinobu Yamamoto ever since. The rookie has soaked up innings, ranking third on the team in innings pitched (40) despite starting just one game. He's pitched in high-leverage situations, too.
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On Wednesday, he started for the second time. He might have to get used to it. He's occupied a hybrid role out of necessity, and now the Dodgers' glut of starting pitcher injuries might require him to join the rotation.
Casparius threw four innings and allowed just one run against the San Diego Padres after originally being scheduled for three innings — something Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said the right-hander fought for. He wasn't particularly sharp, allowing three straight hits and walking in a run in the second inning. It took a 99 mph bullet from outfielder Andy Pages to keep another run from scoring. Still, he managed to give the Dodgers a solid effort. His stuff held over multiple innings, and he topped out at 98.8 mph on his fastball. If Wednesday is any indication, this experiment has legs. Roberts said Casparius' next outing will be a start.
'Where we are at now currently, he's certainly showing that he's 1 of 5,' Roberts said.
Is that what Casparius would like, long-term? He didn't hesitate to say yes.
'Obviously, I've been doing it for the majority of my professional career, so it's something I'm comfortable with routine-wise,' Casparius said. 'I'm just looking forward to what's going on and what's coming up next.'
There are multiple factors at play. For one, Kirby Yates and Michael Kopech are back, giving the Dodgers other right-handed leverage options in the pen. Several of the Dodgers' depth starters have bombed out, such as Landon Knack, Bobby Miller and Justin Wrobleski (who was originally scheduled to start Wednesday's game). Tony Gonsolin's elbow discomfort opened up another spot for a starter.
'He's in for whatever is asked of him,' Roberts said.
That can still change. The Dodgers have an off day on Thursday, which could allow them to reshuffle their rotation. Emmet Sheehan is progressing enough on his rehab assignment that Roberts suggested this week he could enter the conversation as soon as after his next outing.
The Dodgers saw moving Mookie Betts to shortstop as a surplus value proposition. His bat is elite. If his glove could be just average, it would be a massive win in terms of producing value while making the rest of the pieces fit on the roster.
Betts has produced. Entering Wednesday, he ranked seventh among qualified shortstops in Wins Above Replacement, according to FanGraphs. It just hasn't been the shape of production anyone anticipated. The glove has been a massive surprise, including a game-saving play in the hole to get out of a bases-loaded jam in the seventh inning that Roberts said Betts doesn't make a year ago. The bat hasn't matched. The .774 OPS Betts had entering Wednesday would be the lowest of his career.
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He'd argue there's no correlation.
'Last year, I think I was about to win MVP,' Betts said. He had a .907 OPS as the Dodgers' everyday shortstop last year before breaking his hand in June. 'So you can't really argue about that. I was doing way more work last year than now. You can try and point out and blame it on whatever you want, whatever you wanna do, but there's no excuses. It's about getting it done.'
Robert Van Scoyoc, the Dodgers' hitting coach, agreed. Instead, he attributed it to bad habits that Betts developed in the wake of his bout with a stomach virus at the outset of the season. His hands loaded differently. The way his bat was positioned was also slightly off. In trying to generate bat speed, he wasn't using the ground well enough to generate force.
'He just got behind the 8-ball,' Van Scoyoc said. 'He tried to find some solutions that maybe weren't the best, and sometimes you cause more problems, then you got to dig back deeper.'
Breaking his toe at the end of May might have given him a chance to reset. In nine games since, he's hit .351 (13-for-57) with three extra-base hits.
The Dodgers have managed fine in the lineup even with Betts not at his best form. Still, Betts' relative struggles put more on the likes of Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman amid their MVP-worthy campaigns. Freeman sustained a quad injury in the seventh inning of Tuesday's blowout loss but stayed in the game and was in the lineup on Wednesday. He wasn't moving well, in part because he was guarding against making the injury worse.
'He's managing it,' Roberts said.
It also puts an onus on Teoscar Hernández, who moved down to fifth in the Dodgers' order on Wednesday. He entered the day hitting .171 since returning from the injured list, but stirred to life in the sixth inning with a go-ahead three-run blast off of Padres reliever Jeremiah Estrada.
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'It's hard to think (about) the timing and the pitch selection and trying to do things in between, in the middle of the game, in big at-bats, especially when I have three guys in front that get on base a lot,' Hernández said.
But he got a center-cut fastball from Estrada and crushed it. It's no secret that Hernández's production is tied to his bat. He's been worth -7 Outs Above Average in his return to right field. He wasn't any better a year ago while playing a lot of left field (-9 Outs Above Average for the year in both corner spots), but that was lower on the defensive spectrum.
There aren't any plans on having Hernández play some left field on days Michael Conforto sits, Roberts said. On those days, the superior defender in Andy Pages has largely been in left field, with Tommy Edman typically in center.
'He feels most comfortable in right,' Roberts said. 'Last year, the metrics, his comfort level, weren't good in left. So, to move him to left field doesn't seem to make sense. But yeah, there's plays that need to be made in right field and we got to make those plays.'
Before Hyeseong Kim stepped into the box in the fifth inning of Monday night's game, he looked back towards the visiting dugout. No signal came, so he stepped in against Padres left-handed reliever Yuki Matsui for just his third plate appearance against a lefty in his limited big-league sample. He pulled the second pitch he saw down the line for a double to tie the score, moving him to 3-for-3 when allowed to face a left-hander. It's a small sample, but it does include a home run to go with that double.
When Kim's turn rolled back around in the eighth inning and Padres manager Mike Shildt raised his left arm to bring in left-hander Adrian Morejon, Roberts sent out Kiké Hernández to pinch-hit. Hernández struck out.
Kim has essentially been a part-time platoon player since the Dodgers called him up. He will likely settle down some from his .391 batting average he's jumped out to through his first 69 career plate appearances, but it's fair to assume some of that hot start is because he's almost exclusively faced right-handed pitching.
That doesn't mean there won't be exceptions, like Monday. In his stint in the minors to start this season, Kim hit 9-for-28 against lefties. His at-bats have been competitive.
Still, the opposing pitcher's arsenal matters.
'He's putting together really good at-bats versus left, versus right,' Roberts said. 'I think I like the Matsui at-bat, because it's not as much velocity, the ball down, spin with his swing. And I just felt Morejon has got more velocity, and I just felt that was going to be a tougher at-bat for him.'
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Matsui threw Kim a pair of 89 mph sliders. He hasn't thrown a pitch harder than 94.3 mph in his two-year big league career. Morejon deploys a power arsenal, averaging 97.3 mph with his sinker. While the Dodgers have been impressed with the swing changes Kim has made to better adjust to the higher velocity in the major leagues, there's still a desire to protect him from too much, too soon.
'He's doing everything he needs to do,' Roberts said of Kim earning more opportunities vs. lefties. When Matsui entered Wednesday's game with Kim due up, Roberts left the infielder in again. Kim flew out to center.
The Dodgers also re-signed Kiké Hernández because they need him to hit left-handed pitching. But in 60 plate appearances this season against lefties, he has just a .676 OPS. It's not your typical platoon, but the roster fits better when Kim is hitting righties well and Hernández is hitting lefties.
'He's got to be better versus left,' Roberts said of Kiké Hernández. 'That's just the way it is, you know. And he knows that, so I want to keep him involved as well.'