Dodgers feel heat in loss as Paul Skenes and Shohei Ohtani take center stage

Source: The New York Times
Author: Sam Blum

PITTSBURGH -- Three fastballs. All in the strike zone. All over 100 mph. And all swung at and whiffed on by Shohei Ohtani, the game's most recognizable star.

The Dodgers might not be playing like the team that everyone expected would be unbeatable. Their lineup isn't impenetrable. Their pitching staff isn't unhittable.

But they're still the team everyone wants to beat. And as far as early June baseball goes, this matchup featuring the Dodgers' established stars against baseball's most hyped prospect would reveal something -- one way or the other.

Paul Skenes, the Pirates' phenom starter, got Ohtani to swing through all three pitches he saw in the first at-bat. The two-way star would get his revenge the next at-bat with a two-run homer.

"I like to call that big on big," Skenes said. "Obviously, (I) beat him a couple times earlier. I think that was the right pitch to throw there (on the home run), he's just a pretty darn good player. Stuff like that's going to happen."

The Pirates beat the Dodgers, 10-6 as starter James Paxton allowed six earned runs in 1 2/3 innings. The final result, though, was less important than the drama-filled individual matchups that led to it.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts spoke before the game about his team's struggles against the fastball. The numbers don't lie, he said, and the Dodgers' ability to catch up to fastballs eclipsing 94 mph was an issue.

This is what numbers say: The Dodgers ranked 29th in baseball in wOBA on pitches that eclipse 97 mph, entering Wednesday. They were 17th on pitches at 95 mph and faster.

Skenes, of course, does not throw mere 95 mph fastballs. He hits 100 mph so often that anything too far below the century mark is cause for concern. If he were to tunnel his fastball in consistent spots, Roberts said before the game, the Dodgers would simply have to tip their cap.

"I thought today was a really good offensive performance," Roberts said after the loss. "I thought the at-bats were much better. I thought we were on the fastball."

"The overall team approach has been a lot better recently," Ohtani said.

The Dodgers didn't look hapless against Skenes. They recorded five hits against the vaunted Skenes heater. But, for the most part, his fastball played. They whiffed on 11 of their 28 swings and took eight more strikes in the zone.

Skenes had typically relied more on his split-finger, or "splinker" -- particularly in his last start when it was his most used pitch. He'd thrown his fastball just 38.9 percent of the time in his first four starts. This time, he used it 52 percent of the time. A clear game plan to leverage a Los Angeles weakness.

"We did our game plan but every game is going to tell us a lot also," Skenes said. "I kind of attacked based on that."

This game meant something, albeit not in the conventional sense. The Dodgers lead the NL West by 6 1/2 games in a division they appear poised to run away with. The Pirates are in the NL wild-card mix. But so is almost every team. And they're still three games below .500 and flirting with last place in the NL Central.

This game meant something as a barometer for both teams: The fastball-weary Dodgers against the hardest-throwing starting pitcher. Skenes against baseball's most expensive lineup. It all elevated the stage of this game from a random Wednesday night. That was evident in the 29,716 fans who came to watch -- an increase of 10,000 people from the season average.

"His stuff itself was really good," Ohtani said. "As you could see in my first at-bat, I couldn't really put together good swings. But overall, it's just really good stuff."

Both sides showed some vulnerabilities. Mookie Betts struck out twice and showed some frustrated body language after the second one. And Skenes labored through his final innings, needing 93 pitches to get through five frames.

The Dodgers feel better about their ability to catch up to the fastball. The Pirates feel good about winning a series against Los Angeles -- their two young aces out-dueling the opposition.

Skenes will always have his first-inning highlight against Ohtani -- a player the Southern California native grew up watching with the Angels. And Ohtani will have his third-inning revenge.

"There's different steps in terms of maturation," Pirates manager Derek Shelton said of Skenes. "The one thing we're learning about him is that he's not afraid to go after people. He went right after a really good lineup and again, the top three guys all have MVP trophies."