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Twenty walks in 113.2 innings. That is the entire season ledger for the pitcher Los Angeles hands the ball to at 7:15, and he has thrown only 17 of those innings in a Dodgers uniform. Pittsburgh arrives at 63-67 with the second highest strikeout total in Major League Baseball and a starter who has not finished five innings on average.
Pirates vs Dodgers
Los Angeles is 78-51 and has won four in a row, sitting nine games clear of San Diego in the National League West. The Dodgers have scored 645 runs and allowed 499, a differential of plus 146 that only Milwaukee can match in the National League.
Pittsburgh is 63-67 and 17.5 games out of first in the Central. The record undersells the offense. The Pirates have scored 650 runs, five more than the Dodgers have, on a .255 team average and a .742 OPS with 156 home runs. The problem is on the other side: 620 runs allowed behind a 4.29 staff ERA.
So the standings gap of fifteen games is almost entirely a run prevention story. One club scores a lot and gives most of it back. The other scores a lot and does not.
Los Angeles is one of the rare clubs that plays as well away from home as inside it. The Dodgers are 40-25 on the road and 38-26 at Dodger Stadium, which are both strong and neither of which is a meaningful edge over the other. There is no home fortress angle here, only a good team playing at home.
Pittsburgh is 34-32 at PNC Park and 29-35 away from it. The Pirates have gone 5-5 across their last ten and lost on Friday. Their travel profile is the ordinary kind: slightly worse, not disastrous.
One number separates these two staffs more than any other, and it is opponent batting average. Los Angeles holds hitters to .218, the lowest mark in Major League Baseball. Pittsburgh sits at .240. Over 129 and 130 games respectively, that is the difference between 499 and 620 runs allowed.
Pittsburgh Pirates Los Angeles DodgersThe command is the story and it is not close. Skubal has issued 20 walks in 113.2 innings, a rate of 1.58 per nine, while striking out 135, or 10.69 per nine. That combination produces a 0.96 WHIP and a .213 opponent average behind a 2.85 ERA.
He arrived in Los Angeles midseason and this will be his fourth start in blue. The split is worth knowing before assuming anything: 16 starts and 96.2 innings at a 2.79 ERA with Detroit, then three starts and 17 innings at a 3.18 ERA with the Dodgers. Small sample on the new side, and nothing in it suggests a problem.
Against a Pittsburgh lineup that has struck out 1,222 times, more than every club except Cincinnati, a left-hander missing bats at nearly eleven per nine is the single most uncomfortable draw on the board.
Jones is 2-5 with a 4.78 ERA over 64 innings and 14 starts, and the underlying line is better than the top line. His WHIP is 1.20 and his opponent average is .230, with 72 strikeouts against 21 walks. That is 10.13 punchouts per nine and 2.95 walks per nine, which is a good pitcher's ratio.
Two things explain the gap between the ERA and the peripherals. He has allowed 11 home runs in 64 innings, which is 1.55 per nine, and he has averaged only 4.57 innings across those 14 starts. Short outings hand the middle innings to a bullpen inside a staff carrying a 4.29 ERA and 478 walks.
Home runs are the specific concern tonight. Los Angeles has hit 167 of them, and three separate Dodgers have at least 21.
Two offenses within five runs of each other over a full season, and a 121 run gap on the prevention side. The total of 7.5 is a low number for two lineups that have combined for 323 home runs, which tells you the market is pricing the starters rather than the lineups.
Pirates Keys Dodgers KeysDraftKings has Los Angeles at -253 and Pittsburgh at +233, an implied probability of 71.7 percent on the home side, which is one of the two shortest prices on the fifteen game Saturday board. Only Houston at -232 against the Athletics sits in the same neighborhood, and that game features a 49-80 opponent rather than a club with 650 runs.
Seven and a half is the total, with the run line at Los Angeles -1.5. For a matchup between the highest team OPS in baseball and a lineup that has outscored it over the season, that number is a straightforward vote for the two starting pitchers. None of this is a recommendation. This page is analysis only and carries no pick.
The clean read is a strikeout left-hander with elite command against a lineup that strikes out more than almost anyone, at home, for a team fifteen games better in the standings. The market has priced all of that, which is why the number is -253.
Pittsburgh's offense is the counterweight, and it is not a small one. The Pirates have scored more runs than the Dodgers this season. Jared Jones misses bats at a similar rate to the man he is opposing. If he lasts six innings instead of four and a half, this becomes a very different evening.
Skubal is also only three starts into his Los Angeles tenure with 17 innings on that side of the ledger. His body of work says he is one of the best pitchers alive. His body of work in this uniform is still small enough to fit on one line.