The Dodgers recalled Landon Knack to start Wednesday’s series finale against the Nationals. The 27-year-old righty was hit hard, surrendering five runs on four hits and four walks. L.A. nevertheless managed a 6-5 win to avoid a sweep. Manager Dave Roberts said postgame that Knack will stick in the rotation for at least one more turn, as he’ll start at some point in next week’s series against the Rockies (relayed by Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic).
Knack bounced between the big league roster and Triple-A Oklahoma City throughout last season. He managed a 3.65 ERA across 69 innings as a rookie. Knack fanned 24.1% of opponents against a tidy 6.3% walk rate, but he allowed home runs at an elevated rate of 1.83 per nine innings. He’d made a two-inning relief appearance during the opening Tokyo Series. This was his first start of 2025.
The rotation spot opened when Blake Snell landed on the injured list over the weekend with shoulder inflammation. Testing has not revealed any structural damage. Roberts said on Tuesday that the two-time Cy Young winner will resume throwing at the beginning of next week (via Jack Harris of The Los Angeles Times). The injury did not require any kind of injection. The Dodgers haven’t provided a return timetable, but it appears to be a relatively minor concern — at least as far as shoulder injuries go.
Knack probably won’t hold a rotation spot for the entirety of Snell’s IL stint. Tony Gonsolin was battling for the final rotation spot until he tweaked his back lifting weights late in Spring Training. He opened the season on the IL as a result, but he has gotten through two rehab appearances without issue. Gonsolin tossed 46 pitches over 3 1/3 dominant innings in a start for OKC tonight. He allowed only one hit and walk apiece while recording seven strikeouts. He’ll make at least one more Triple-A start but should be activated within the next few weeks.
Meanwhile, Freddie Freeman will evidently be able to return from his injured list stay without a rehab stint. Roberts said this afternoon that he anticipates the Dodgers will reinstate the star first baseman before Friday’s series opener against the Cubs (via Sonja Chen of MLB.com). It’ll be a minimal 10-day IL stay after Freeman suffered a right ankle sprain. Enrique Hernández has played first in his absence. The utilityman has a bizarre .103/.163/.410 batting line over 43 plate appearances. Hernández only has four hits all season and they’ve all been home runs.
Knack is going to start against the Rockies and then probably get a promotion to AAA. Boy I love my team, but they are hard to watch at times.
Yeah, as in, now. Knack looks like a sophomore slump case.
Sophomore slumps are definitely not a made up thing. Both of our teams just need to look back to last year and Nolan Jones and James Outman. It’s all abut the league figuring you out and whether or not you can work through it instead of just relying on talent alone. Because talent alone doesn’t make it at the highest level with 99% of players.
It’s been just 4-1/3 innings.
bingo!
True, but it was 4.1 very bad innings. As hiflew said, sophomore slumps are real. So we shall see what kind of adjustments are made in his next start.
This season is looking alot like the last one. Deja vu all over again….
Dodgers should have invested more money in starting pitching.
@roob
And in hitting! These dodgers are gonna be awful! Can’t believe how cheap the ownership group is.
They have plenty of depth for the year, and if they need quality they can make an acquisition. Ohtani, Sheehan, Gonsolin, Kershaw all coming back at some point, and hope that out of Knack, Wroebleski, Miller they can find better quality depth for injuries. Have to hope that the core guys are healthy for postseason. May making good progress.
Kiké is a one true outcome guy.
It seems like Kike is always swinging for the fences.
Except that liner right at the SS, and that liner right to the CF. He’s not exactly striking out every time he doesn’t hit a homer.
His statcast is awful. His expected BA is still only .191
Kike is striking out a lot just like that waste of space Muncy.
That sounded like a shot at Muncy…. Since he’s not hitting dingers he’s filling up the scorebook with K’s
I was going to go with 2 true outcomes but you beat me.
Dodgers 5 thru 9 hitters tonight:
1 for 19 with nine strikeouts
Oof. And this is not an atypical showing. In theory it’s not sustainable. But the Dodgers have shown they can win with two MVPs and Teo. 3 out of 9 guys in your lineup producing and getting a quality start from your pitcher may be enough to win most games. We’ll see how it plays out.
Good points. Except for Will Smith, the effective position players for the Dodgers came to the team from other organizations. Last year, the Dodgers had the same issue with the bottom half of the batting order struggling (Hayward, Outman, Taylor, Lux, Kike), and this year it has been Muncy, Pages, Rojas, Taylor, Kike, and Comforto. ,
Taylor? The guy only has like 5 AB’s… It’s a wonder he even knows where the batters box is anymore
Ebbs and flows of a long season. Bottom of the order struggling right now but we know that some of those guys will get hot at some point, and that performance will normalize over the course of a longer sample. Some of that is Kike playing everyday for Freeman. And Muncy off to a very slow start. Dodgers don’t appear to like playing in cold weather. But they’re playing sloppy baseball right now, not indicative of a 10-4 team.
Stars and scrubs
So, the Cubs have to play in Japan against the Dodgers (Home field advantage Ohtani,Ohtani,Ohtani,and those “other guys”[Yamamoto,Roki,Imanaga,Suzuki])and then play them again in L.A. without the Tax Dodgers playing in Wrigley? Not fair!
And, for all the punctuation purists out there, I hope I got my (“”[]) typed correctly.
The Dodgers go to Wrigley later this month.
My bad. Thanks for pointing that out.
It doesn’t take a punctuation purist to point out that your rambling is poorly-punctuated, poorly-formatted, worded wrong, and Ohtani having been listed 3 times.
Your right. It was extremely poorly-formatted (did I get that “-” right?).
They play in Chicago later, and the cubs have Japanese players also. Oh and the dodgers haven’t tried dodging any taxes. So literally nothing in your post is true. Try again. Or don’t
I had Imanaga and Suzuki (my favorite Cubbie!) in my comment. But I am a total moron schedule wise. Thanks for keeping me humble.
They “dodge” penalty taxes by deferring money. Nothing wrong with that and nothing inaccurate in that part of my comment.
Nothing correct about it, either.
They’re not dodging anything. The Dodgers pay more in luxury taxes than any other club, and by a large margin. They will pay more in luxury taxes this year, than 1/3 of MLB teams pay for their entire roster. And what is this “penalty tax” that you speak of? Everything you’ve written is inaccurate, and more than half of it, is spelled incorrectly.
More than half spelled incorrectly? Let’s just start there.
Good luck with this. To understand the concept of present value requires understanding the concept of loans — which seems like a rarity anymore. But this also explains why so many people are over their heads in debt, I guess.
Landon has a Knack for allowing runs at the big league level.
Get the Knack. He was good but struggled when facing Rick Wrona’s sister, Mysha.
So, deferring money on any MLB contract doesn’t lessen the “luxury tax” or “penalty tax” or “whatever tax” on that contract? Why does ANY MLB Club do it?
No, it does not. The top line number you hear on deferred contracts is its present value, plus the interest over number of years of the deferral at the annual interest rate set by the CBA (currently around 4.5%). It is, in fact, a loan from the player to the team. The actual cost to the team is the present value. The attraction especially to a team owned by a money management company is they feel they can easily beat the modest interest rate that the CBA requires to be paid on the money they borrowed from the player, and come out dollars ahead.
LA has the weakest bottom of the lineup in the game and the weakest bench.
Incorrect by a long shot.
Sure buddy, the bottom of the lineup is strong and a bench of Taylor and Barnes is even better.
view some other teams and get back to me.
View Miami and the White Sox. View the Mariners when little Miles Mastrobuoni is in the lineup.
Exaggerate much? “weakest bottom of the lineup in the game and the weakest bench”. Bottom of the orders and bench players typically don’t perform as well as top/middle of order and starters. They’ll be fine over a longer sample size. And if they don’t, there will be some movement. But way too early for that.
The Dodger$ are the most overrated team on the planet. Seriously flawed pitching staff and everyone after the number 5 hitter pretty dreadful. When Michael Conforto is your starting left fielder, well, that pretty much sums it up.
The Nationals exposed and exploited El Lay$ flaws, as will everyone else.
You remind me of the guy that was proclaiming that the Giants have the best starting pitching in baseball last year after 40 games.