Dodgers look like NL’s best after sweeping Braves — and now get another boost

LOS ANGELES — While Sunday served as a statement about the Dodgers’ standing atop baseball’s hierarchy, Monday presents a reminder of why their best still could be ahead. 

After finishing off an emphatic three-game sweep of the Braves, the Dodgers have now won 11 of their past 13 games and extended their National League West lead to 5.5 games, jumped out to a 103-win pace — and they’ve done it all without their typical cast of stars in the rotation. On Monday, they’ll get one back as Walker Buehler returns to a big-league mound for the first time in 22 months. 

“Health-wise, I feel great now, it’s just kind of getting all the rhythm back,” Buehler said ahead of his first start since June 2022. “I think big-league game, big-league environment, will definitely help me in terms of hopefully a little velocity, but I think more than anything the tempo and the delivery works better when you’re kind of amped up a little bit.”

Buehler’s fastball velocity got up to 96 mph while at Triple-A, though he sat closer to 93-94. Some shaky command led to a 4.86 ERA through his first five rehab outings, but the Dodgers deemed him ready to return after he bounced back to hold the Salt Lake Bees to one run in five innings on April 30 in his sixth and final rehab appearance. 

While he checked all the boxes necessary to return, he found it impossible to muster the adrenaline he would typically get before a major-league game — the kind he had channeled so well over the past six years as he developed a reputation as one of baseball’s elite big-game performers. 

“To be completely frank with you, there’s not a whole lot of that for me down there [in the minors],” Buehler said. “I wish there was. I wish it was easier for me to get going, and I wish it didn’t sound so s—ty to say that, but I think getting the adrenaline of pitching in the big leagues is something I’ve been looking for for a long time.”

That wait will end Monday when Buehler faces the Marlins, 20 months after undergoing his second career Tommy John surgery. 

In 2021, he averaged 95.3 mph on his four-seamer when he went 16-4 with a 2.47 ERA and finished fourth in Cy Young voting. A year later, his velocity again sat in the mid-90s, but he didn’t look right as he battled both his mechanics and his health over 12 troubling starts before undergoing UCL and flexor tendon repairs. 

Manager Dave Roberts is tempering expectations in Buehler’s first major-league start in 696 days, but he expects Buehler’s velocity “will be where it needs to be” with tens of thousands of Dodgers fans set to watch the two-time All-Star on Monday.

“I think leading up to the surgery he was still kind of trying to get through things, so I think body-wise, arm-wise, he’s in a much better spot,” Roberts said. “As far as kind of the throw characteristics and all that stuff, I think he’s in a good spot. I really do. But you don’t really know until you see him out there against major league hitters.”

What comes next is a bit of a mystery as Buehler attempts to accomplish what few All-Star starters have before — returning to an elite level of play after a second Tommy John surgery. 

Originally, he hoped his comeback would take place last year. Buehler made one rehab start at Triple-A last September, just a year removed from his procedure, in an attempt to help ahead of the postseason. But he wasn’t bouncing back the way he hoped and ultimately turned his attention to 2024. 

After being slow-played this spring, Buehler insisted his recovery hadn’t been compromised. The Dodgers have not yet revealed a specific innings limit in what will be a contract year for the former ace, but knowing he would likely be on some sort of workload limit, he structured his season so he would be available at year’s end and avoid a start-and-stop situation. 

“I think that’s going to be open-ended or read and react,” Roberts said. “Obviously his health is most important going forward, and so it could be a situation where from Monday onward he makes every start. It could be a time where he might need to take a blow. I just don’t know right now. It’s going to be kind of contingent on how he’s feeling, for the most part.”

Whatever Buehler can provide will be additive, but he no longer needs to be the workhouse he once was. The same goes for Clayton Kershaw and Dustin May, who could provide more assistance in the rotation later this year. 

Led by Tyler Glasnow, who recorded his third double-digit strikeout game of the year Saturday, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who’s coming off back-to-back scoreless outings, Dodger starters have amassed a 2.03 ERA over their past 13 games. Against a loaded Braves lineup, Glasnow, Gavin Stone and James Paxton combined to allow four earned runs over 19.2 innings. 

Roberts was careful not to make too much of the Dodgers’ sweep, instead expressing how evenly matched he still believes the two teams are, but he did glean something from the trouncing, which added to the Dodgers’ MLB-best run differential. 

“I think the thing that it speaks to is if we pitch well, we can keep any team at bay,” Roberts said. “With our offense, every game is winnable.” 

Paced by MLB’s OPS leaders in Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani — who homered twice Sunday, three times in the series and 10 times in his first 35 games with the Dodgers — and sparked by rookie prospect Andy Pages, whose consistent production has stabilized the bottom of the lineup, the Dodgers’ offense has scored more runs than any team in baseball and now leads the majors in every slash line category as it starts to separate itself from the rest of the league. 

This weekend, that group overwhelmed an Atlanta club that entered Dodger Stadium with the highest winning percentage in baseball, outscoring the Braves by 14 runs over the weekend and sending them home trailing by 2.5 games in their division. 

“We’re pretty close,” Teoscar Hernández said Friday after homering in an extra-inning win against the Braves. “But, you know, I’m always going to say we’re better than them.”

Two days later, Hernández’s second home run of the series put the finishing touches on a sweep that showcased why the Dodgers’ new additions make them so dangerous. 

Buehler has been a part of teams past that have gone all-in at the deadline, but he has never seen anything like what the Dodgers did this offseason. 

“We have three or four generational players in this locker room, and any given day one of them takes over, and then the talent outside of the headline guys I think is pretty incredible,” Buehler said. “Yeah, I definitely feel pretty fortunate to be in this locker room.”

Needless to say, all of that adds to his excitement for Monday night — a start two years in the making that should elicit more butterflies and adrenaline than anything he felt in Oklahoma City or Rancho Cucamonga. 

“I hope so, man,” Buehler said. “I think if I don’t, there’s something wrong with me other than my UCL.” 

Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on Twitter at @RowanKavner.

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