Starters shine in Dodgers' statement sweep vs. Padres. Plus: Knee catch!

New York Times

2 days ago

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The Dodgers are still the kings of the NL West (but they'll do it all over again next weekend).
Plus: Ken on the Brewers' good fundies, a catch I don't think we'll ever see again, and Zack Wheeler's diagnosis puts the Phillies' rotation under the microscope. I'm Levi Weaver, welcoming back Ken Rosenthal — welcome to The Windup!
Well, that felt definitive.
On Friday morning, the Padres were in first place, having won 14 of their last 17 games, with an opportunity to put a little distance between themselves and the Goliath just up I-5. Instead, the Dodgers reminded us all who they are, sweeping the Padres and re-taking the NL West lead by two games.
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The Dodgers found their intensity, just in time. The Padres had a scouting report against (former Padre) Blake Snell that didn't pan out Saturday. Yesterday, with the game tied in the eighth inning, Mookie Betts set aside his down season and homered to make the difference in a 5-4 finale.
But the difference-maker — as noted by Fabian Ardaya and Dennis Lin in the series takeaways here — was the starting pitching.
For much of this season, the Dodgers (71-53) have leaned heavily on their bullpen, due to a combination of injuries, more injuries and some other different injuries to their rotation. It has been that bullpen, weary and decimated, that has let them down lately.
So it felt important for the Dodgers to get these lines from their now-healthy starters:
Throw in Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Emmet Sheehan, and that looks a lot more like what the Dodgers hoped. Meanwhile, the Padres' rotation suddenly looks vulnerable. After rough starts by Dylan Cease and Yu Darvish over the last two days, San Diego (69-55) has to be looking forward to the (latest) return of Michael King.
Also, not that we need fireworks to make a pivotal series interesting, but … nobody yelled at anyone this weekend. We'll see if that continues next weekend, when the two teams meet up again in San Diego.
One more note: These three wins meant the Dodgers secured the season series against the Padres — it's 8-2 with only next weekend's games remaining. That gives L.A. the tiebreaker, should the two teams finish with the same record.
From my latest column:
People in baseball keep warning me: Don't get carried away with the Milwaukee Brewers.
The Brewers' batted-ball luck is absurd, they say. Their 53-17 record since May 24 might be a classic case of peaking early. Come the postseason, they could be headed for another quick flameout.
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All true. But even though the Brewers' 14-game winning streak ended yesterday with a 3-2 loss to the Cincinnati Reds in 10 innings, their record is best in the majors by six games. The team that opened the season with the sport's eighth-lowest payroll is putting the competition to shame.
There's a lesson here, if anyone in baseball cares to heed it. The lesson is in every ball the Brewers put in play and every runner they advance, every cutoff man they hit and every extra base they take. The Brewers are not perfect — yesterday's loss included a critical error to open the ninth by Brice Turang at shortstop and two botched bunts in the late innings. But they at least try to play the game properly at a time when most teams place too little emphasis on fundamentals and too much on the next big analytical thing.
This is not to bash analytics, which provide tools to evaluate players and help them improve. Every team recognizes data and technology as essential elements of the game. And the Brewers, lest anyone forget, began their run of six postseason appearances in seven years under the methodical, analytically driven David Stearns.
But as organizations rush to develop greater power in both hitters and pitchers — a trend players eagerly embrace, knowing it is incentivized by the game's pay structure — the team concept often is lost.
Can someone please explain why clubs fixate on enhancing pitchers' fastball velocities and hitters' exit velocities but fail to properly instruct players on running the bases and hitting the cutoff man? Why can't organizations focus on both?
More here.
I'm not even sure if I can nominate this for the catch of the year, because this transcended the word 'catch,' flickering into another dimension and becoming some other, new thing. Yes, it was technically a catch. It was also more than that — acrobatics? Avant-garde dance? Medieval Wizard Magic™️?
I mean, look at this:
Jung Hoo Lee with the catch … BETWEEN HIS KNEES 🤯 pic.twitter.com/QRSMh2ArGV
— MLB (@MLB) August 17, 2025
In case you're still not clear on what you just saw: He caught the ball between his knees.
Baseball has been around a long time. There have been hundreds of thousands of AL/NL games, college, high school, Little League, the Negro Leagues, the World Baseball Classic and various other professional and amateur leagues around the world. Millions — probably tens of millions — of baseball games have been played. So I can't tell you this has never happened before …
But do you think we'll ever see a catch like this again? I doubt it.
After the first month of the season, the Philadelphia rotation was so good that Ranger Suárez's return presented a conundrum: Who on earth was going to lose their job to make space for him?
The ensuing months didn't do much to dampen the enthusiasm: Going into last night's games, the Phillies had the second-best ERA in the sport from their starting pitchers. The team is 71-53, tied with the Dodgers for the second-best record in the NL.
But there's some adversity afoot.
Cristopher Sánchez continues to pitch like an ace, and Taijuan Walker has been perfectly serviceable, both as a starter and a reliever. But the Phillies have to hope that Nola, as he continues to find his rhythm and feel, starts to look more like he did in 2024 — his ERA this year now sits at 6.92.
Remember when Mariners outfielder Victor Robles made this catch in April? He suffered an injury on the play and has been on the IL ever since. Well … he might not be back for a while longer. Last night, after being hit by a pitch, Robles threw his bat at Las Vegas pitcher Joey Estes.
Both the Yankees (who swept the Cardinals) and Mets (who took two of three from the Mariners) are showing signs of emerging from their parallel August funks.
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The Cubs still hold the top NL wild-card spot, but Kyle Tucker's slump is ranging into 'it's time to figure it out' territory.
What's it like to catch Tarik Skubal? Cody Stavenhagen found out in a Q&A with Tigers catcher Dillon Dingler.
Guest columnist and former big-league pitcher Dustin McGowan writes about the experience of losing a no-hitter in the ninth inning — and what he learned from Roy Halladay.
Jim Bowden got an early start ranking the upcoming class of free agents.
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