The Los Angeles Dodgers could not get out of Arizona quick enough, as Wednesday afternoon they were swept by the division rival Diamondbacks in their first road series on the season.
The Dodgers have a day off on Thursday before opening up a three-game weekend series against the San Francisco Giants for the second and final leg of their road trip. Given the off day, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has an opportunity to reshuffle his starting rotation.
After indicating earlier in the week that the club wouldn’t make changes, Roberts reversed course and now has Clayton Kershaw penciled to start the series finale at AT&T Park on Sunday.
Going into Wednesday’s game against Arizona, who would start the first two games of the series remained unknown. Because the Dodgers and Diamondbacks had played 15 innings, Kenta Maeda was moved to the bullpen in the event he was needed in relief.
Maeda did not appear in the Dodgers’ third consecutive loss, putting him on track to start Friday’s series opener against the Giants, via Ken Gurnick of MLB.com:
Maeda starts Friday.
— Ken Gurnick (@kengurnick) April 4, 2018
There is rain in the forecast for Friday in San Francisco, so the Dodgers are not even sure if they will be playing that game, or if they will be forced to play a doubleheader on either Saturday or Sunday.
Maeda faced the Giants in his first start of the season, and was quite good as he tossed five shutout innings, giving up just five hits and one walk while striking out 10 in a victory. That was Maeda’s second double-digit strikeout game in his Major League career.
With Maeda set to start on Friday and Kershaw going on Sunday, that leaves Rich Hill and Hyun-Jin Ryu as options to start the middle game of the series. Hill will likely get the nod there as he also turned in a solid start against the Giants in his first outing of the season.
