Dodgers broadcasters won’t travel to Philadelphia & Washington on road trip

Dodgers broadcasters will call the next two road series from Los Angeles, after “a few members” of the broadcast team tested positive for COVID-19, the team announced on Wednesday.

Jack Harris of the Los Angeles Times reported that Jaime Jarrín and Charley Steiner both tested positive and are experiencing symptoms. It is unclear if there are others on the broadcast team also sidelined.

During Tuesday’s doubleheader against the Diamondbacks, Joe Davis and Orel Hershiser called the opener for SportsNet LA, followed by Nomar Garciaparra filling in as analyst in the nightcap. Hershiser was back with Davis for Wednesday’s game. On radio Tuesday, Tim Neverett and Rick Monday called Tuesday’s opener, with Monday and José Mota calling both the Tuesday nightcap and Wednesday’s game.

The Dodgers on Wednesday said for the upcoming three-game series in Philadelphia and Washington D.C., Davis and Dontrelle Willis will call games for SportsNet LA, Monday and Mota will have the radio call, and the Spanish-language radio call will be by Pepe Yñiguez and Fernando Valenzuela.

The 10-game road trip concludes with a four-game series against the Diamondbacks in Arizona, but the Dodgers have not yet said whether announcers would travel to Phoenix for that series.

A wrinkle for that series in Arizona is the Saturday, May 28 game will be televised by Fox, which leaves three games on SportsNet LA. Davis will be away to call Saturday’s Phillies-Mets game in New York, which usually means missing at least one other game during the weekend for travel.

Links

Clayton Kershaw didn’t throw a bullpen session on Wednesday, still dealing with soreness in the SI joint in his lower back. The Dodgers will likely use bullpen games twice on the road trip, with no real timetable just yet for Kershaw’s return from the injured list. Dave Roberts on Wednesday, per Juan Toribio at MLB.com: “Just kind of where he’s at right now, he doesn’t feel — we don’t feel — that it makes any sense [to throw a bullpen] ... I don’t know when the next go at this will be. But I don’t see it in the next few days.”

Jay Jaffe at FanGraphs dug into Mookie Betts’ early season slump and subsequent recent hot streak. As you can see from the headline, Betts is “(mostly) fine,” though Jaffe notes that Betts has had trouble with high-velocity fastballs, particularly elevated ones.

Among the notes in Fabian Ardaya’s profile of Trea Turner at The Athletic is that the Dodgers shortstop played the final four months of 2021 with a broken finger on his left hand.

This is a few days old, but Andrew Simon at MLB.com noted how Max Muncy has so many more walks than hits this season. Muncy’s walk-to-hit ratio would be the second-highest in modern AL/NL history, behind only Barry Bonds in 2004. Updated through Wednesday, Muncy’s 29 walks (ranking second in the majors) and 19 hits give him a 1.53 walk-to-hit ratio.

Kody Hoese, who hit two home runs Tuesday, is heating up for Double-A Tulsa. He was named the hitter of the day in Wednesday morning’s minor league update at Baseball Prospectus. “Most of the struggles can be attributed to an aggressive assignment and trying to play through a painful rib cage injury,” Nathan Graham wrote. “When healthy, he’s a power bat who commands the strike zone well.”