Michael Conforto wasn’t in the starting lineup during Sunday’s huge win over the San Francisco Giants, but he still finished with three hits while raising his batting average to over .200 for the first time since April.
Conforto was the lone offensive producer on Friday, taking Justin Verlander deep for the Dodgers lone run, and finished the weekend with an additional four hits and four RBI. In what has truly been a year to forget, he is making the most of the final homestretch, as he is slashing .303/.385/.394 through 10 games in the month of September.
There was a spark of luck that long evaded Conforto throughout the season, per Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic, and his stellar weekend has put him in a better state of mind.
“It’s been a long time,” Conforto said with a smile that read more like relief than anything else… “Just a little bit of luck,” Conforto said. “Ball rolling my way. It seems like when you’re in a better place, those things happen a little bit more often.”
Tyler Glasnow had gone over five months without recording a win, but the right hander now has two straight over his last two starts. Although his command was relatively erratic early on, he managed to pitch into the seventh inning for a third straight start while keeping San Francisco at bay (no pun intended).
“It’s encouraging,” said Glasnow, who has a 3.06 ERA on the season and a 2.66 mark since returning from a shoulder injury in July “Since I got back from the IL, it’s been easier to kind of put [those kind of struggles] out of my head and go compete. If my stuff sucks, it’s kind of whatever. Just compete, try to get in the zone, get some weak contact. It’s helpful.”
The Dodgers have just 13 more games in the regular season, with their first opponent of the final two weeks being against the Philadelphia Phillies, a team that sits four and a half games ahead of the Dodgers for the second seed in the National League playoff picture.
With the Dodgers on a roll over their last two games— 23 runs scored since Saturday— the time is now for them to make a statement against Philadelphia in the pursuit of another Wild Card series bye, per Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register.
“We want the bye, obviously. And obviously, we’ve played ourselves into this position,” Freeman said of the prize that comes with the No. 2 seed. “We’ve got two weeks left, got a big series against them. So hopefully we can continue to keep playing the baseball we’ve been playing and hopefully win the series and keep it going.”