Dodgers find glimpse of consistency after sweep of Cardinals

LOS ANGELES -- It’s been a lengthy quest for consistency for the Dodgers as they endured an up-and-down first month of the 2023 season that started with a 13-13 record through 26 games.

During the last weekend of April, however, the Dodgers seemed to have found something and showed glimpses of the team that won a combined 217 regular-season games over the last two seasons.

The Dodgers opened their homestand with a three-game sweep of the Cardinals following a 5-3 win on Sunday at Dodger Stadium. It’s the first three-game sweep of the season for Los Angeles and its third time winning at least three in a row.

“I just feel like we’re playing better baseball together instead of one facet good, one facet not,” said Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman. “It’s just nice to see it all come together for a few games.”

Outside of two rough games against the Pirates, the Dodgers have played much better over the last week and a half, winning seven of their last nine games.

Perhaps most impressively this weekend, like Freeman said, is that the Dodgers found a way to win games in different ways. On Friday, the lineup and defense took care of business as Jason Heyward made a pair of spectacular plays in the outfield and the Dodgers scored seven runs.

On Saturday, the lineup struggled against another left-handed pitcher -- which is an area the team still needs to figure out -- but Clayton Kershaw showed why he’s one of the best pitchers of all time, tossing seven scoreless innings. In the finale, the Dodgers’ lineup manufactured runs. Four of the six runs scored Sunday came on a productive out.

“It was a clinic in team offense,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. “I think we had an opportunity in that first inning and we couldn’t capitalize situationally, but after that, scoring four runs on an out, that’s pretty impressive.”

The Dodgers’ offense did enough to back up Noah Syndergaard on Sunday. Syndergaard has had an inconsistent start to his season, but he was able to limit the damage to three runs over 5 1/3 innings.

Despite some of Syndergaard's success, including landing the curveball better than he has in previous outings, St. Louis was still able to record seven batted balls with an exit velocity of 100 mph. The right-hander only got three swings and misses. The lack of swing-and-miss stuff could be concerning moving forward, but Syndergaard found a way on Sunday, recording his first win as a Dodger.

“Yeah, it feels really nice to get the first win out of the way,” Syndergaard said. “All in all, I think it was a really good team win today, really nice series to finish off a sweep. As far as what was going for me, I think I just did a pretty good job of keeping them off balance.”

But perhaps the most important development of the weekend came from the Dodgers bullpen. Following Syndergaard, the relievers combined to throw 3 2/3 shutout innings, capping off a strong weekend. In the three-game series, the Dodgers' bullpen allowed one run over 9 2/3 innings of work.

On Sunday, Alex Vesia and Yency Almonte had arguably their best outings of the season. Vesia and Almonte were two of the most reliable relievers last season and the Dodgers will need them moving forward.

“When you look at the last few weeks, we’ve had three guys pretty much stand out and we can add Shelby [Miller] to that list,” Roberts said. “But to get Yency and Alex back on track would be very beneficial.”

It wasn’t necessarily the month the Dodgers expected when they broke camp last month. But all in all, the Dodgers finished their first month-plus of the season three games over .500 and tied for first in the National League West.

“We would like to have put this together a lot quicker than we did, but we have been playing better baseball the last few days,” Freeman said. “Obviously losing [Will Smith] for a while with his concussion, everyone felt like having babies at the same time -- it’s just nice to get everybody back together again and obviously play some good baseball.”