HEAT DEALT by Los Angeles Dodgers in Tampa | DOWNWARD TREND for Mookie Betts

HEAT DEALT by Los Angeles Dodgers in Tampa | DOWNWARD TREND for Mookie Betts

The Dodgers just wrapped their longest road trip remaining in 2025 where thanks to Freddy, Yoshino, and Clayton, they won more than they lost. Barely, even though they were this close to striking out 100 times in a nine-game span. You are Locked on Dodgers, your daily Los Angeles Dodgers podcast. Part of the Locked On podcast network. Your team every day. It’s time for Locked On Dodgers, part of the Locked On Network. Your team every day. Two elite arms and one red hot bat where all the boys in blue needed to take two out of three in Tampa. The Dodgers pitched two shutouts against the Rays and were blanked once. Plus, is Tommy Edmund going on the IIL just as Max Munie is ready to come back? We’re talking all about it in today’s episode, which is brought to you by 5H hour energy transfusion. Go to 5hour energy.com today and use my promo code lock to receive 20% off your first order. Only valid through September 30th. Order transfusion flavored 5-hour energy shots today. He’s Travis Rogers. I’m Harry Ruiz. Two guys who talk sports for a living and bleed dodger blue for life. If you’re an early bird listener of our show, you can get more Travis on 710 ESPN or the ESPNA app from 9 to noon with the Travis and DeMarco show. As for me, I’m the Spanish play-by-play broadcaster for the USC Football Trojans. But nothing beats jumping on the mic every weekday morning and diving deep into what I love most, which is talking Dodger baseball with you. Yoshiu Yamamoto dazzled. Clinton Kershaw turned back the clock and Freddy Freeman, he was a one-man wrecking crew at the plate. Travis, how bad did LA need to head home with this momentum they now have by winning the series? Well, you go back to the beginning of of the road trip when they go to Boston and it got off to a pretty good start with a win, but then after that it really started to feel like, oh my gosh, here we go again. That they just did not look like a team that was playing good baseball. They were making mistakes, uh, you know, on the bases. they weren’t hitting and and so on and so forth. You go to Cincinnati and it’s a little bit more of the same. Nothing really looks all that great. They finally were able to put some stuff together in Tampa. They win the series in Tampa. They win two out of they they win one more game than they lose on the road trip. So, all in all, and then like you mentioned, you had some real positives coming out of Tampa that I think you can really hang your hat on if you’re a Dodger fan. Number one, you mentioned it, Freddy Freeman is back and looks like Freddy Freeman all over again. and he’s getting a couple hits a game. He’s driving the ball in a way we haven’t seen him drive the ball in maybe two months, which is a really long time when you think about it. Yamamoto looked great again. Clayton Kershaw looked great. Um, you know, it’s just and more and more it seems like he’s going to be a part of what they’re doing in the postseason. I never really thought that that was a likely uh outcome. And then of course the return of Blake Snell and I know they lost that game. They didn’t score any runs, but Blake Snell looked good. Blake still, you know, gave up a couple of home runs that, you know, it’s gonna happen. That’s part of life in the big leagues, but he struck out a bunch of guys as well. I think you got to feel really good about what you saw out of him. And, you know, obviously some some bumpy things in there as well. Mookie trying and some things we’ll get into. Uh, but but generally speaking, after what started off as a trip that didn’t make you feel very good, finished on a high note and coming home against Cardinals, I think they got to feel pretty good, of course. And then also you have to look at all the challenges the Dodgers went through playing in that kind of environment. Three different first pitch times and I’m talking about East Coast times, 700 p.m. on Friday, 100 p.m. on Saturday, noon on Sunday with the humidity being I mean something that the Dodgers aren’t used to playing. You would see the guy’s faces. Clinton Kershaw when he was out there on Friday on Friday night he was sweating like crazy. And then the way that the pitchers, the grip, the humidity affects it big time. So you go over also it was a spring training ballpark with a short porch at the right field and to be able to go out there get two pitching shutouts. That’s no small feat. So shout out to LA for doing that. Yeah, it’s just it’s weird. And I know that you know here we are it we’re in August and we’ve seen the Rays in their minor league park. We’ve seen the A’s in their minor league park. But when you see all of a sudden, you know, the Dodgers in an environment like that, it it kind of brings it home how bizarre the entire set of circumstances actually are. Um, yeah. I I’m glad you brought up the start times. That’s weird. I think one of the one of the things that is underappreciated by by fans when it comes to what big leaguers do, they’re incredibly regimented. They get to the ballpark at this time. They eat at this time. They hit at this time. They take ground balls at this time. They head down to the bullpen at this time and it’s kind of just the same thing day after day after day and when you get a schedule that is not consistent, it can kind of, you know, mess with that schedule a little bit. I I thought that they handled it pretty well. Those East Coast trips are always bizarre and then of course you throw in the minor league stadium and the weird start times, it gets even more bizarre. But, you know, all in all, they handled it pretty well. I I I’m I’m optimistic that they’re starting to get some guys back both both not just on the on the roster itself, but in their performances like we’ve expected. So, you know, we still a long way to go, but you can at least see the end from here. Yeah. And we already spoke about, yeah, they won two out of three. They came back home winning five out of nine from the road trip. But we also have to talk about the big elephant in the room. They went 18 full innings without scoring a run between the top of the fifth inning on Friday until the sixth inning on Sunday. But pitching took care of business with the heavy lifting. Both Kershaw on Friday and Yamamoto on Sunday. They threw exactly 88 pitches each and both allowed five hits and both no walks, no runs. That’s the kind of pitching you need. That’s the kind of guy that you need on Yamamoto as your ace. Kershaw, you want him to be a reliable arm once October rolls through. I don’t know if he’s going to be a starter, per se, during the postseason, but we’ve seen him in the postseason in 2020 where the last game of the series, the World Series against the Rays, he was out in the bullpen. It was like, “Hey, if you need me out of the bullpen, I’m ready to go. He got no problem.” And then Beller in 2024, he said that his mindset was like, “What would Kershaw do? He’ll go and do whatever the team needs.” So Kershaw, he’s ready. He’s getting everything ready. Snell, he was the victim of two Yandi Diaz home runs of just 326 and 341 feet. First big league start since March. Five innings pitched, five hits, three earned runs, eightks. But I mean, no run support. That’s going to make it difficult. But you saw both ends right there from the Dodgers. Incredible pitching, just enough runs, get the win. Good pitching, no runs, loss. Yeah, I want to go back to what you’re saying about Kershaw there. And look, when he decided he was going to come back for the 2025 season, I thought, “Okay, great. Let’s get the 3,000 strikeouts and then let’s just see what it looks like and just kind of kind of go from there.” And I didn’t have a ton of expectations. There was even a point at at, you know, early in the season like, is he even going to get to 3,000? Because I think he came in, he needed like 54 or something like that. And, you know, he wasn’t going to pitch a ton of innings. He wasn’t missing a ton of bats. And I’m thinking, okay, are they going to be able to find enough opportunities for him to pick up those strikeouts? Well, obviously that took care of itself and he did a good job there. And then all of a sudden, you look like, hey, he’s not only kind of getting through it, he’s pitching pretty well. And then it’s he’s pitching very well. And then you see like what you saw over the weekend in Tampa and he looks sharp. Now it gets complicated because if Snell is back, if Otani gets stretched out, if Yamamoto looks like Yamamoto looks and Glasnau looks like he’s looked since he’s come back, you don’t need five guys in the playoffs. Now you can use five, but I don’t know if you necessarily want to do that and not get a second look at an Otani or a Yamamoto or a Glasnau. And the question becomes, do you use Clayton Kershaw out of the bullpen? I know he’s done it before, but to wildly mixed results, wildly mixed results. And more of them, I think, probably not in the great than to the good. So, do you do you find a way to shoehorn into that rotation? Does it take care of itself? You know, one of my favorite baseball expressions is always these things tend to take care of themselves. That guys will be out when it comes time to go, guys will be in when it’s time to go. But they have they probably have a pitcher or two more than they need in the rotation. And who might be better served in the bullpen than another, I think, is going to be a big part of what they ultimately land on. like Kershaw out of the bullpen at this point with the stuff that he has. I think what he’s great at is setting guys up, pitching, using one at bat to work off of another at bat. And I don’t know if coming in in the middle of a game in a tight situation is really his uh his level or his area of expertise at this point. Just to go back to that strikeout stat, he has been the starting pitcher in 13 games this season. Only four times has he gotten over three strikeouts in 2025. the last time he had more than three strikeouts in the game. You got to go back to June 26th. So, yes, he’s not being the dominant Kershaw that we remember as a National League MVP or Sai Young winner, but he can still get the job done. And there’s a clear example with what they did in Tampa Bay as a team in Kershaw individually. Now, something that’s very concerning, six games with Templan strikeouts during the nineame road trip, 95 strikeouts total. They went into the game on Sunday and I was seriously concerned that they would get to 100 strikeouts victims during those games and I was like that that’s not going to make it. Travis, when you go into the playoffs and you’re facing elite pitcher after elite pitcher after elite pitcher, that’s troublesome right there. It is. It is. And they strike out a lot. They have a lot of guys on their team that that are going to strike. You know, nobody probably more than show Otani. Show Otani. He strikes out a lot now. He hits a lot of home runs and he hits a lot of doubles and and triples and you know he’s an incredibly dangerous guy but you know Tay Oscar Hernandez strikes out, Otani strikes out. Mookie Betts is not striking out a ton but maybe a little more than he usually does. Even Freddy Freeman had a stretch where he was striking out a little more than he typically does. Um look, the Dodgers have won more games than this year because of their offense than probably anything else. I think they’ll get that figured out, but I I know we’re going to talk about this coming up in just a little bit. A huge part of this is Muki and and whether he can get going because if he’s on base, you can survive a strikeout here or there or maybe even more than a strikeout here or there, but if he’s contributing to that total, then you’re in a different spot. Absolutely. And now just a couple of notes as well from this weekend’s Brock Stewart. He has his return with the boys in blue. One inning, one hit, no runs. Unfortunately, Blake Trinan, he’s still not sharp. Uh you saw his outing out there and he had two walks a hit, left the game with the bases loaded and Ben Kasparius ended up bailing him out. There was a deja vu from a couple of days ago in that series against Cincinnati. Right. That and that’s that’s the part to me, Harry, that’s really, you know, I’m going to stop short of alarming. I don’t want to go all the way to alarming, but is concerning, which is, you know, they had to go get him in the middle of the ninth inning twice in the span of about four or five days. that that’s not good at all. Um he he’s he’s coming back. He’s trying to work his way in. I still have faith in Blake Tryan, but um I’d like to see some of that rust come off and start seeing the guy that is basically unhitable when he’s on because they’re they’re going to if he’s not Blake Trinan, I I really do think that could be a fatal flaw for them in the postseason. They’re going to need somebody that wipes guys out at the end. And you’re not you can’t wipe guys out if you’re walking them. and he’s really struggled when you know putting guys on base without really doing anything and they’re not hitting them a ton and the hits they are getting aren’t particularly hard hit but they don’t have to be if you walk guys in front of him. One last one, Alex Call made his debut in the lineup on Sunday. One for three with a walk and a run scored on Sunday. He’s a specialist against lefties. I didn’t think he was going to debut until the home series against the Cardinals and they threw him out there on Sunday and he did a good job both with his glove, with his bat and on the base bath. So there’s the two new Dodgers on the team, Brock Stewart, Alex Call. They already Stewart returned with the Dodgers. Call made his debut with the Dodgers. And next on Locked on Dodgers, we talk about Mookie Bets. What’s going on with number 50 with the $365 million man? Is he going down on the lineup? We’re going to find out. It’s time to fuel up and turn it up with 5-hour energy transfusion. It brings the bold grape, ginger, and lime flavor of your favorite golf drink, minus the alcohol, into a quick energizing shot. Whether you’re sinking birdies or just making memories with friends, this one’s a wholein-one for your energy game. 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Thank you for making us your first listen wherever you may be tuning in, either on your favorite podcast app or our YouTube channel. Smash that notification bell so you never miss a beat. full episodes, hot takes, breaking Dodgers news, and the Dodgers postcast show with Pete Fox Live after the final out of every single game. I’m shocked how literally the game just ends. And I already got the notification on my phone that Pete Fox is is live. If it drops, you’re on it. That’s how you become an everyday here on Locked On Dodgers. Like Elsa, who on Friday’s trade deadline recap said, “It doesn’t matter. They don’t score runs when it comes to the these Dodgers.” Travis uh the trade deadline came left and now we’re just over here and waiting to see. Hey, no moves by the Dodgers. No big moves. They did two where it’s like, okay, Brock Stewart, Alex Call, they’re on the 40man roster. Your thoughts because we didn’t have you on Friday. I want the fans to know what you thought about this. Yeah, underwhelming I think is is, you know, a pretty obvious statement. Um it was not, you know, especially when you see some of the the bigger names move. You see a Mason Miller come into the division. You see the Yankees get a little better. You see Doell move. They You just see a a lot of guys that you like really would think would be pretty good in LA. Uh went to other places that just a ton of movement. And the Dodgers, like you mentioned, two kind of middle of the pack moves. Nothing that makes you go, “Oh my gosh, we got this guy.” Now, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t good moves. That doesn’t mean I don’t know if anybody was jumping up and down with Michael Copek. I don’t know if anybody was jumping up and down with Jack Flity or, you know, Tommy Edmond, a little bit of a different story because he’d been a gold glover before and a versatile player, but sometimes these moves are are exciting and flashy and names you rec recognize and you get excited about them and they don’t work out. And sometimes it’s more like this. You’re like, “Hey, Brock Stewart’s getting outs in the seventh, eighth, and ninth inning in playoff games.” And all of a sudden that’s the move of the deadline. Um, I said this before, you know, the everydayers are probably getting a little for, you know, they’re they know what I’m gonna say. I trust this front office, you know, about as much as you can trust any front office. They’ve made way more good deals than bad. I know that Andrew Freriedman kind of philosophically does not like to pay big dough for relief pitchers. And I wonder if what happened with Tanner Scott and what happened with Kirby Aates where they have underperformed so far um isn’t a little this is why I don’t like paying relievers and he I don’t want to say learned his lesson but kind of went back to his core beliefs and I can put together a bullpen on the fly if I need to do it and that’s why they were kind of lacking. Now, what they did in the outfield with call, that’s fine. Nice defensive addition there. But, uh, it doesn’t really fix your left field problem, which I think we all agree is is is out there. But, you know, we’ll see. Maybe somebody can kind of find a a spot. Maybe Freeland can find it. Maybe Edmond gets in there at some point. Maybe Mookie goes back to the outfield. Who knows what it is. But, uh, yeah, I I think generally speaking, just a pretty tepid, underwhelming deadline, uh, for the Dodgers. We both agree, right? The Dodgers are better than they were on Thursday with those moves they did on Friday. They’re not way better, but they’re better. Yeah, mildly. Yeah, I think you’re right. I They’re not worse. You know that it’s not like something that you look at and say, “Oh my gosh, what did they do?” You know, James Alman, I like James Alman. He got off to a great start. I was optimistic. It never really happened for him. Dustin May had been here a long time. Um, and you know, it’s funny. I saw a graph, Harry. I’m glad you brought that up. that the Dodgers acquired more prospects than they sent out. Like at the deadline, the Dodgers are actually a more talented minor league system than they were when they started. So, at the big league level, they might have gotten a little bit better, but at the minor league level, at the prospect level, maybe they got, you know, more than a little bit better, which of course will allow them to make more moves down the line. Um, I like what they did. I wouldn’t say I love what they did, but it wasn’t like, hey, what the heck is going on? I can’t believe they get rid of this guy or that guy. I think they believe that what they have in on their roster, what they have uh uh on the IIL, when all of those pieces come together, they still have a better team than everybody else. I think they’re betting on what they already had and is coming back. Of course, and one big reason they haven’t been scoring as they would like to is that Mookie Betts is having the most unproductive season of his career when it comes to batting average on base percentage, slugging, and OPS. right now he has gone 0 for his last 18 at bats. Travis, is it just a slump or are you ready to call it a bad season already? Well, I I think it’s more than a slump. Obviously, a slump a slump in in the middle of August is not a slump. That’s a that’s a really rough season. Now, um by the time that this year is done, two things can happen. Number one, when you go to baseball reference 2025 for Mookie Bets is going to be like, “What the heck happened there?” that there’s just not enough time for him to get it back to look like a Mookie Bet season. However, the second thing that can happen is he can be great for a month or two and absolutely lead this team to the World Series. He can have a great three weeks in October and be the reason they win the World Series. he can get a big hit in October against an American League opponent in the World Series and win World Series MVP like that. He’s he’s that talented of a player and he’s certainly a good enough guy uh to do all of these things. But, you know, to I I thought that when you know, you saw they flipped the lineup back, they put Muki back in the second spot and clearly that didn’t unlock him the way that they were hoping it would. There really is only one thing left to do to try to say, “Hey, let’s see if we can rediscover some of that old mojo, and that’s to put him back in the outfield.” I don’t think they’re going to do it. I’d like them to do it. I don’t think they will. But yeah, um it’s a bad season there. There’s really no sugar coating it. It’s been a really tough season for him. Um I The good news is there’s two months left. There’s the playoffs left. And Mukie Betts is an incredibly talented baseball player. So, if he got hot for a week or two, a month or two, I wouldn’t be shocked. But here we are, August 4th, and he has been quite frankly really bad for almost the entire season. Yeah, you brought up he was taking off of the leadoff spot on Sunday to put Shi back up there. Otani, he got on base four times. In the first two of them, Betts grounded into a double play and then flyed out on the first pitch he saw on the second AB. Afterwards, he took a walk where he didn’t take a single swing, Travis. He watched all five pitches. It was a walk. And then in his last at bat, he finished up with a sack fly with runners in second at third with one out. At least he got a a run batted in with that one. But it was a 10 pitch at bat, so it was better. But what concerns me is like my favorite at bat with him was the one where he didn’t take a single swing. And that’s not how I want to feel with Mookie Betts. And once again, let’s reiterate because I know in the comment section there’s going to be a lot of people, stop hating on Mookie. We love Mookie Bets here. We’re Dodgers fans. Travis and I, we love the boys in blue. We love Mookie Bets taking us to two World Series in 2020 and 2024 after not having a single one since 1988. So, we love Mookie. We just we’re talking about it because we want it to change. We want Muki to be better. And now I feel that it’s time to have a serious conversation on if Mookie Betts should slide down even more in the lineup and have Will Smith be the man to follow up after Otani leads off. Yeah, it it you know I I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with kind of shuffling the lineup a little bit. I don’t know how far you want to drop him. He he is Mookie Bets, but he’s not hitting. You know, it’s not a personal judgment. It’s a mathematical judgment. And so he’s just he’s not having a good year. He’s not getting enough hits. he’s not producing enough offensively to just, you know, keep saying to yourself, it’s going to happen. It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen. I hope it does, but in the in the meantime, until it starts to happen, I you know, shuffling the lineup a little bit is not the end of the world. Um I I’m like I know I know I say this a lot. I’m optimistic. I I really am. I think that Muki will figure it out. I think that he’s too good. He’s still too young to have just completely lost his mojo like this. I think there’s, you know, who knows what’s going on in his personal life. who knows what’s going on physically. You know, maybe that illness he got at the beginning of the year really seemed to kind of wipe him out. He never really recovered from that. Um I I I don’t know. I just know that when you look at his numbers, that is not a Hall of Fame player. And Mookie Bits is a Hall of Fame player, so something isn’t added. I I I’d keep moving him around until you find something that happens because you can put Shi anywhere and that dude’s going to get hits. He’s going to get on base. He He doesn’t care. you can you can move him pretty easily, but I I I would keep tinkering with it until you find something that works. Just before we we go to a short one, I want to bring up a comment somebody left on uh YouTube not long ago. I don’t remember if it was you or I that said show could do anything. And this commenter said, “Well, that’s wrong because he can’t play catcher.” I was like, “If there’s one guy I wouldn’t bet against learning how to play catcher just to shut up somebody, it’s Rojo.” Hey, are you sure he can’t? commenter on YouTube. Are you sure? Because I’m not like I I you put him in center field, shortstop, wherever you want. Could he figure it out? Yeah. I mean, think about what he’s doing. You really want to bet that there’s a thing on a baseball field that show Otani couldn’t do now. We’ll never find out because nobody’s crazy enough to put him back there, but I don’t know if I’d ever bet against that guy. I don’t know. And just got a great catcher. A great catcher. One of, if not the best in Major League Baseball right now. So, who we’ll keep it like that. Coming up on Locked on Dodgers, one up, one down, while Maxy’s return is imminent, there seems to be worry in the Dodgers organization regarding Tommy Edmond’s right ankle again. 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And if you’re new to FanDuel, new customers can bet just $5 and get $150 in bonus bets if your first bet wins. Open the FanDuel app today or visit fanuel.com to get started. Don’t forget to follow Lockdown Dodgers not only on YouTube, but on X, Instagram, and Tik Tok as well. You can find Travis on social media, Travis Rogers on X and Instagram. Meanwhile, I’m Harry Ruiz onx, at Harry Ruiz on Instagram, and at Harry Ruiz on Tik Tok. Let us know how worried you are when it comes to Tommy Edmonds health because the MVP of the 2024 National League Championship Series has been struggling with his right ankle since May. He aggravated it in June, July, and now on Sunday, he left the game in Tampa Bay after getting a base hit and rounding first base. It wasn’t even anything spectacular, anything where it was a bang bang play. No, he was just rounding first base and he had to be taken out of the game. Dave Roberts said he might miss up to two weeks. How big of a blow is this for the Dodgers knowing that they’re already down another utility man when it comes to Kika Hernandez? Yeah, it it’s something, Harry, right? I mean, you you look at the standings, they still only have a three-game lead in their division. It’s still close enough to where these the regular season games matter. And had you told me that we’re going into the the first and second week of August and the Dodgers would still be looking over their shoulders in the division, I don’t think I would have believed it. I thought they would have separated by now. It hasn’t happened for all the obvious reasons that we’ve talked about. But I I do believe that this team still thinks they’re the best team and they don’t care what the path is forward as long as they’re in the tournament. And I I I have a hard time envisioning a scenario where they’re not in the tournament. Now, if that means they got to go through, you know, they’re not one of the top two seeds and they got to play in that wild card round, I don’t think they care. Even if they had to play as a wild card, I don’t think they care. I think that their goal is, and this is a long way of getting back to what you’re talking about with Tommy Edmond, is we need to be as healthy as we possibly can at the most important time of the season, and that is not in the middle or the beginning of August. The most important time of the season is at the end of of September and all through October. That’s when they need to be at their best. So if that means getting Tommy Edmond off of his feet, it’s think about when Edmond came to the team last year. He didn’t play for the first month or so after they acquired him and everybody’s like, “Oh great, this guy, you know, he never even play.” And then all of a sudden he started to play. It’s like, “Oh, wow. He’s an amazing guy. Can do a lot of things. He’s switch hitter, etc., etc.” And you mentioned his MVP. So he’s very important to what they’re going to do. But I again I I think that they are so hyperfocused on October. They know that they they’ve seen other teams. The Padres’s did it to him from the wild card. Arizona’s done it from the wild card. They won from the top seed last year. It happens all over the spot. You don’t have to be this or that. You just need to be in and be healthy and be hot and that’s what they’re playing for. And that’s why if Edmond sits down, that’s fine. Just get him back for October. We had gone through back-to-back years where Dodgers fans, we wanted baseball to go back to the regular playoff format because it’s like, man, these wild cards, we’re getting to rest uh five days while they’re playing and we’re staying cold. We come back, we lose to the Dbacks, we lose to the Padres’s. No, this isn’t good enough. Last year, we were one game away from being eliminated against the Dodger. Yeah. Bullpen game. Bullpen game on the road. They delivered at Petco. They won and they made it through and then they won the World Series, but that’s something that makes it difficult. So, I’m actually not against if the Dodgers aren’t in a top two seed, even if it means giving up homefield advantage in the divisional series in the NLCS and more than likely in the World Series. If it means that everybody’s healthy, but man, right now you start I’m getting very concerned because it’s the same ankle. If it was a different part of his body, I would be like, “Okay, no, it’s the same one.” Yeah. I They just need to be in. I I I the Dodgers are one of the few teams you got to play a game on the road. Okay. I I I don’t think show Otani and Freddy Freeman and and and Yo Yam Yamamoto and those guys are going to be like, “Oh my gosh, we got to play in Yankee Stadium or or you know, wherever they may end up in Toronto. I I don’t think that’s going to be the thing that really freaks them out. I think that they will be fine no matter what. Um you just want to be healthy.” And look, maybe it’s one of those years where he never gets fully healthy. Sometimes that happens where you just get those little nagging injuries that never really clear up until you can get off your feet for months at a time. So hopefully he gets right, but they’re going to have to figure it out one way or the other. Now going to the guy that might be filling his spot in the active roster after going hitless in his first three appearances with the OKC Comets during his rehab assignment. Max Muny went three for three with an RBI on Saturday and then two for three with a double and a home run with two runs batted in on Sunday. There’s a very good chance he returns to the big league club this week, including the possibility of it happening in the series against the Cardinals that starts tonight. Do you think Edmond’s injury will fasttrack things with LA when it comes to the Maxify front? I don’t know if one has anything to do with the other, Harry. I think that they’ll be they’ll operate independently of one another. They may line up to where it just, you know, one guy goes out while another guy is coming in. So, the roster is, you know, fairly easy to to manage like that. But I don’t think the Dodgers are going to keep Edmund around in an effort to wait for Max Muny to get here. That seems unnecessary and a little risky. So when if Edmond needs to go down, he will. If and when Muny is ready to come up, he will. If it lines up, great. But I don’t think that 1 plus 1 equals two. I just think that it might be a coincidence that they’re at the same time. And the good thing is Alex Freeland, the rookie who has been playing third base, he’s gone four for 13, 308 batting average. He got his first RBI this weekend. And he also has a walk. Yes, six strikeouts versus four hits, but he’s a rookie. He’s starting to learn his craft when it comes to the big league level. And if Tommy Edmond isn’t available to be there at third base, you have Alex Freeland, you got Mickey Row, and if you if Max is back, I will be more than happy to have him back right there in the hot corner. Yeah, they they’re they have options. They’re they’re getting better. They they’ll keep throwing guys out there. Freeland has done a good job since coming up. And you know, this is why you have a minor league system. This is why you continue to develop prospects because bestlaid plans and all that. We all know how that phrase ends. You know, you never know what you’re actually going to have. And you you got to put nine guys out there every single night. Freeland has done a good job and now you’re going to get, you know, I I don’t want to say a better player necessarily, but certainly a more experienced player in Maxie and and and a better historic player. So yeah, g get get your regulars back, start to get them lined up and ready to go and then backs stop them with the freelands and the rushings of the world. That’s a that’s a pretty good recipe. Fantastic. And that’ll do it for today’s show from Travis and I. Thanks for making Lockdown Dodgers your first listen. If you’re still craving more baseball talk, have the allnew Locked on MLB Game Night be your second listen every game, every night, all season long. Get local analysis on a national scale. Find it on Locked on MLB on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. and also catch Pete Fox after every Dodgers game on our YouTube channel with his live postcast. We’ll be back on Tuesday to talk about the Dodgers being back at Chavez Ravine to start a six-game home stand that kicks off tonight by hosting the Cardinals with a good pitching matchup between Tyler Glassnau and Sunny Gray. Do you like Travis the Dodgers chances on this one? Because Gray is a high volume strikeout artist. That’s fine. Glazow is going to do what he does. I I’m glad now when he pitches almost always pitches well. So, anytime you got a guy like that on the bump, you got a good chance. I’ll take it. Keeping my fingers crossed that that’s the case. We appreciate you writing with us. Until next time, keep it real. Keep it Dodger blue.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Clayton Kershaw dominated on the mound, while Freddie Freeman stayed scorching at the plate to help the Dodgers take 2 of 3 from the Rays.

But while some stars are shining, Mookie Betts continues to struggle — is it a slump or something more serious?

Plus, with Tommy Edman potentially returning to the IL, Max Muncy might return from it just in time to take over third base for the rest of the season.

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