Home Care In Clayton, LA

The Dodgers are known for having top-of-the line training staff, and athletic development coordinator Eric Yavarone is no exception. He’s been working with Clayton Kershaw extensively this season with incredible results: Kershaw is coming off of a perfect August, going 5-0 in his starts. What’s the secret? Something Yavarone calls “the bowl,” writes Jack Harris at the Los Angeles Times.

The bowl is how Yavarone describes the hip, pelvis, and lower back area. For Kershaw, who has a history of back issues, the concept allowed him to think of moving and maintaining the area in a new way. He’s been feeling much better on a daily basis, allowing him to remain more consistent on the mound.

Consistency has long been the name of Kershaw’s game. He’s known for maintaining the same routines, from pre-game rituals to his workout regimen, but he’s also been open to tweaks when needed—to a point. He worried that altering his routines too much would affect his pitching, Harris writes, until Yavarone introduced the bowl.

“It was giving him more of the ‘why,’ showing him the anatomy part of it,” Yavarone said. “I think with him, if he feels you believe in what you want him to do, if you’re convicted when you tell him what you got for him, I think he likes that.”

From changing breathing patterns to new weightlifting and mobility drills, Kershaw has adjusted his long-held habits and seen results because of it, feeling looser and healthier than ever.

“I haven’t heard boo about anything as far as any physical kind of thing, outside of just the grind of the season,” manager Dave Roberts said.

Will Smith’s pinch-hit, walk-off homer on Sunday saved the Dodgers from being swept. Could it be the beginning of a much-needed turnaround for the Dodgers at the plate? Let’s hope so, writes Doug Padilla at the Orange County Register.

The Red Sox released Walker Buehler on Friday, and he’s already found a new home with the Philadelphia Phillies, writes Matt Gelb at The Athletic. He’s signed to a minor-league deal but is scheduled to start in the majors on September 12 as part of a six-man rotation.

We already know that the Dodgers’ head-to-head record with the Padres could make a big difference come playoffs, but several other divisions could come down to tiebreakers as well, as Dayn Perry outlines at CBS Sports.

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Once upon a time, batting .400 was something magical. Now, most batters are lucky to hit .300, says Bill Shaikin at the Los Angeles Times. In fact, the only National League hitter batting at .300 or above is Freddie Freeman, who sits just over the line at .302. What gives?

“The pitching is just too good. It’s hard to combat,” Freeman said. “My whole goal every year is to hit .300. It’s getting harder and harder.”

That goal might just be enough, as Freeman is now in the batting title conversation. Last year’s winner, Luis Arraez, won with a .314 batting average, a drop from Freeman’s own winning average of .331 in 2023.

Only one other player—Carl Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox—has won a batting championship with a lower average. Yaz did it with a .301 year in 1968 (the first with a shorter pitcher’s mound, coincidentally).

Pitchers aren’t the only ones changing. There’s a stronger emphasis these days on hitting homers and getting on base, chasing a better on-base percentage rather than a batting average.

“Batting average isn’t valued as much — until you get to the postseason,” manager Dave Roberts said. “Then you want guys that can get hits and drive in runs, right?”

Clayton Kershaw felt that he didn’t have his best stuff in his last start, but he still looked as sharp as ever, writes Cary Osborne at Dodger Insider. This August has been particularly great for Kersh, who went 5-0 for the first month since June 2017.

The Dodgers are comfortable with their six-man rotation and plan to stick with it until the playoffs require cuts, writes Doug Padilla at the Orange County Register. Emmet Sheehan is likely to get dropped during the playoffs despite his recent performance, according to Padilla, and deciding who else to remove for the required four-man system will be a tough decision.

Dodgers hitting coach Aaron Bates was sidelined for more than two weeks because of blood clots in his left leg but is now back with the team, reports Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic. Although Bates said the health scare changed his perspective a little bit, he remained an active member of the Dodgers’ staff during his recovery, sending notes as he watched games from home.

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Clayton Kershaw won all five of his starts with a 1.88 ERA in August, while not being pushed deeper into games. He was pulled after six innings with 74 and 76 pitches, and only pitched five innings on Tuesday against the Reds at only 72 pitches, having retired his final 14 batters faced. The extenuating circumstances there include being on four days rest instead of five, and both Kershaw and manager Dave Roberts noting after the game that Kershaw had nowhere near his best stuff during that start.

Still, the results have been great in season 18 for Kershaw, who is 9-2 with a 3.06 ERA in his 17 starts. And most importantly, given how the last two years ended, Kershaw is healthy. Sonja Chen of MLB.com wrote about Kershaw’s last month:

“It was a good August,” Kershaw said. “Physically, everything feels good. I think everything changes from start to start sometimes. But overall it was great. The team got a lot of wins, which was great. Fun to be a part of it this time of year.”

Kendall George is up to 86 stolen bases on the season, with eight games remaining in High-A Great Lakes season. The outfielder was among 10 hitters profiled by Geoff Pontes at Baseball America for standout performances in August:

Though he has bottom-of-the-scale power and is unlikely to ever hit 10 home runs in a season, he figures to consistently hit for a high average, get on base and put pressure on opposing defenders with his 80-grade speed. George’s plus bat-to-ball skills, advanced approach, speed and outfield defense could make him the best among his archetypal contemporaries in the major leagues like Chandler Simpson and Victor Scott.

Hannah Keyser wrote at The Bandwagon newsletter about how all dozen teams currently in playoff position have odds of at least 90 percent to make the postseason.

“This seems, in a word, bad. There’s more than 400 games left in the regular season. You could skip them all, Rip Van Winkle your way to October, and not miss a beat,” she wrote. “The expanded postseason, which was supposed to give more fanbases a rooting interest down to the wire has, this year at least, done the opposite.“

Old friend Andre Jackson has a 2.31 ERA in 21 starts with Yokohama this year, his second in Japan. On Friday he also hit the first home run by a pitcher in the league this season. It was Jackson’s first home run since hitting two for the Kelowna Falcons in British Columbia in the West Coast League, a collegiate summer as a 19-year-old in 2015 in between his freshman and sophomore seasons at the University of Utah.

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The Dodgers may be dealing with a bit of whiplash in Colorado after coming down from the high of sweeping the Padres, but as we’re reminded in today’s notes, there are still plenty of good vibes to go around—and plenty of opportunities to turn things around. Again.

The Padres series seemed to awaken the Dodgers as a whole, writes Rowan Kavner at Fox Sports. The Dodgers brought some much-needed intensity to the field against San Diego, and despite yesterday’s loss to the Rockies, they’re planning to keep that energy for the rest of the season.

But don’t get too excited just yet, cautions Dave Scohenfield at ESPN. The Padres are known for their own intensity, and there’s still plenty of season to play—including one more series in San Diego. One series isn’t definitive, but it’s at least a good start.

Do the Dodgers have a problem in right field? Teoscar Herández’s miscue last night cost the Dodgers the game, and he’s currently ranked 37th of 39 qualified right fielders in outs above average, writes Manny Randhawa at MLB.com. Hernández’s bat is too much of an asset to take him out of the lineup, Roberts said, so defensive improvement is essential.

What a time to be healthy for Clayton Kershaw. The Dodgers are in the home stretch and headed towards the playoffs, and Kershaw is enjoying every minute of the ride—especially since he’s able to contribute to the chase for another title, writes Bill Plunkett at the OC Register.

Oh, the roller coaster that is the Dodgers’ pitching situation. At the trade deadline, the baseball world seemed to think pitching was the team’s biggest liability. Now, it might be their biggest strength, according to Jordan Shusterman and Jake Mintz at Yahoo Sports.

Freddie Freeman has endured the most frustrating year in his time with the Dodgers, although a .303 batting average would say otherwise.

Freeman began the year leading the National League with a .374 batting average after May 31. Once June began, his batting average began to decline drastically to the tune of a .200 average in June and a combined .226 average between June and July. His power evaporated during this time, as he hit just two home runs between May 12 and July 31 after smashing nine beforehand.

His lack in production correlated with the Dodgers’ losing ways in the month of July, but both the team and Freeman have put together a much better month of August. Freeman’s batting average on the year still ranks second on the team behind Will Smith, the current leader for the batting title. He admitted that being in the conversation for the batting title means he’s still having a good season despite the mid-season struggles, notes Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register.

“That makes me smile because it means I grinded through it and even when I didn’t feel good I was still able to be on the field and maybe throw some hits out there,” Freeman said. “That’s how I look at it. If you’re talking to me about a batting title at the end of August, that means I had a good year.”

After winning their first six games against the Colorado Rockies this season, the Dodgers could only manage a four-game series split at Coors Field before another highly anticipated series against the San Diego Padres at Petco Park.

Although the Dodgers only took two out of four games against the worst team in baseball, Clayton Kershaw acknowledged that wins aren’t guaranteed, and the team will try to ride the high of their win in the series finale this upcoming weekend, per Kevin Baxter of the Los Angeles Times.

“You can’t take anything for granted in Colorado, obviously,” he said. “But at the end of the day, we’re [one] up going in [to San Diego]. So we feel good about it.”

Dave Roberts spoke about the energy the Padres will bring against them in the final season series against the Dodgers, with an insistence on playing as well as they did in their previous series against them, per Manny Randhawa of MLB.com.

“I feel good about our club going into San Diego… We’ve obviously played well against those guys this year. They’re going to give us everything they have this weekend and we’ve got to be ready for it.”

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