Dodgers players flew to New York on Wednesday night rather than on the Thursday off day, something the team has done all season thus far, part of a revised travel plan that Jack Harris of the Los Angeles Times detailed on Friday.
The team now takes two airplanes on every road trip, making permanent a trial run down the stretch last season: From Harris:
In the days of traditional single-plane travel, the Dodgers would typically wait to fly out of Los Angeles if they had an off day between the end of a homestand and the start of a road trip. It meant one extra night at home, but a later arrival into cities on the eve of an away series.
“When you’re spending your off day on the plane,” veteran third baseman Max Muncy said, “you don’t ever feel like you’re as recovered.”
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Shohei Ohtani’s weekly bullpen sessions will continue — pushed back to Sunday after Friday’s marathon series opener — but this time with a new wrinkle. He’s facing batters for the first time during his rehab from his September 2023 elbow surgery. Fabian Ardaya at The Athletic has more on this latest step of the long process.
With Mike Trout missing nealy 60 percent of Angels games since the start of 2021, David Schoenefield at ESPN delved into whether Mookie Betts might surpass Trout as the best player of his generation. There’s also discussion of how to define generations, and how Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge might factor in as well.
Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register spoke with several veteran Dodgers about the dynamic of losing longtime teammates like Austin Barnes and Chris Taylor, including this Kiké Hernández:
“I think with the people we have in here, the amount of veteran guys who’ve basically seen it all, it’s one of those things where we can have our two or three sad days. But it gets to a point where the game is not going to stop because we just released two beloved guys.”
The Dodgers lost four in a row last week and have played so-so for nearly three weeks, going 9-9 dating back to May 4. But last year’s championship has lessened the need for worry, writes Mirjam Swanson of the Orange County Register.
“Current events that make L.A. less likely to overreact to the inevitable uphill stretches and downhill swings that precede the playoffs,” she wrote, “and less likely to burden a ballclub with unnecessary angst until it’s necessary angst.”
David Roth at Defector did the important legwork to find whether Jon Heyman was paying too much for blueberries.
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