Game Day: Showtime for Dodgers and Angels

Daily Bulletin

24 May 2023

Game Day: Showtime for Dodgers and Angels

Editor’s note: This is the Wednesday, May 24, 2023, edition of the “Game Day with Kevin Modesti” newsletter. To receive the newsletter in your inbox, .

Good morning. When the Southern California sports spotlight swung from basketball to baseball yesterday, the Dodgers and Angels were ready.

First, more Lakers talk:

With LeBron James hinting at retirement, GM Rob Pelinka said the Lakers’ leader can take his time deciding on his future.
Columnist Jim Alexander thinks about what LeBron might be thinking, and gets a kick out of the Nuggets’ Western Conference title being overshadowed.
The Lakers’ off-season tasks include trying to hold onto Rui Hachimura, Austin Reaves, D’Angelo Russell and Dennis Schröder.

On the scoreboard:

In other headlines:

Columnist Mirjam Swanson goes deeper into the Michael Block story – the PGA Championship scene-stealer is “everyman” if everyman had a super golf game.
The Chargers sweetened running back Austin Ekeler’s contract with incentives, averting a holdout.
And the L.A. Archdiocese expressed disappointment after Catholic leaders lost their battle over the Dodgers’ on, off, on-again Pride Night invitation to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

Now, on to the Dodgers and Angels, who powered past the season’s 50-game mark like, well, LeBron leading a fast break.

Last night, the Angels (27-23) won for the fifth time in six games, beating the Boston Red Sox 4-0 at the Big A as Griffin Canning (Santa Margarita High, UCLA) pitched seven shutout innings in his deepest outing since 2020 and Mickey Moniak continued his hot hitting.

If you only started to pay attention to the Angels after the Lakers were eliminated, you’d think they’ve played like contenders all season.

Earlier in the evening, the Dodgers (31-19) had a game to remember, taking over the best record in the National League by beating the Atlanta Braves 8-1 at Truist Park as top L.A. pitching prospect Bobby Miller made an impressive major-league debut.

If this was the first you’d seen of the Dodgers in a while, you might think all is well with their starting rotation, which definitely is not the case after injuries to Dustin May and Julio Urias.

Miller’s performance, following fellow rookie Gavin Stone surviving a rough first inning in an 8-6 Dodgers victory over the Braves on Monday, brought a sense of relief and more.

It wasn’t clear what to expect from Miller, 24, the Dodgers’ 2020 first-round draft pick from Louisville. He’d stirred imaginations by striking out the Angels’ Shohei Ohtani in a 2022 Freeway Series exhibition and striking out three of his five batters in the 2022 MLB Futures Game on All-Star weekend at Dodger Stadium. But his minor-league numbers haven’t been great, and he’d only recently bounced back to form at Triple-A Oklahoma City after a sore shoulder delayed the start of his season.

It didn’t look good, either, when the Braves had no trouble hitting Miller’s 100 mph fastball, scoring in the first inning. But Miller and catcher Will Smith were able to mix in effective sliders, curves and changeups, the breaking balls accounting for four of his five strikeouts (he walked one). Miller retired 13 of the last 16 hitters, twice pitched out of trouble with runners on third base, and induced more swings and misses the second and third times he faced hitters than the first.

A baseball season being as long as it is, teams have to be judged in shorter stretches – month by month, before and after the All-Star break or trade deadline, before and after key injuries or the emergence of new stars.

For the Angels, the last few days might signal the start of a season-making stretch, Moniak (from La Costa Canyon High in Carlsbad) looking like the No. 1 overall draft pick he was for the Philadelphia Phillies in 2016, Canning joining Ohtani, Reid Detmers and Jaime Barria in recording sharp starts in series wins over the Minnesota Twins and Red Sox.

For the Dodgers, Miller’s even-better-than-expected debut and the series win over the Braves could make this a defining moment. More definition is to come when they visit the Tampa Bay Rays this weekend, needing better from Noah Syndergaard (5.88 ERA) and Clayton Kershaw (5.12 in his last four starts) and then Stone.

TODAY

Dodgers and Tony Gonsolin (zero earned runs in four of five starts) go for a series sweep in Atlanta (4:20 p.m., SNLA).
Angels’ Tyler Anderson (5.27 ERA) faces the Red Sox, seeking his first winning (or even losing) decision since April 2 (6:38 p.m., BSW).
UCLA needs a win over Washington after losing to USC 6-4 yesterday to open pool play at the Pac-12 baseball tournament in Scottsdale, Ariz. (2:30 p.m., Pac12N).

BETWEEN THE LINES

Michael Block, the PGA Championship folk hero who has been invited to play in the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, isn’t given a big chance of winning. A bet on the Orange County club pro to win this week’s event would fetch you +50000 odds (500-1). Scottie Scheffler is a +400 (4-1) favorite.

280 CHARACTERS

“Dodgers’ Bobby Miller announces his presence with authority — first big-league pitch is a 100.1 mph fastball.” – Bill Plunkett tweeting from the scene in Atlanta.

1,000 WORDS

Flying start: Dodgers pitcher Bobby Miller celebrates as he leaves the mound in Atlanta after striking out the Braves’ Matt Olson in the fifth inning to cap his victorious major-league debut. Photo is by John Bazemore for AP.