Diamondbacks-Dodgers preview: Zac Gallen, Clayton Kershaw to open high-stakes series

The Arizona Diamondbacks begin a four-game series on Friday with the Los Angeles Dodgers at Chase Field four games back of the NL West leaders.

A series split would be enough to give the D-backs the tiebreaker over the Dodgers, but Arizona is coming off a series loss that was its first since July began.

The two teams have the best two records in MLB in August, as Los Angeles has stayed hot while Arizona has tried to make up ground in the race for the division. The D-backs have not won the NL West since 2011.

The Dodgers have rattled off two five-game win streaks during the month, including sweeps over the Pittsburgh Pirates and Seattle Mariners, but they have otherwise been hot and cold recently.

The four-game series is Los Angeles’ first time back on the road after a nine-game homestand, its longest since the first month of the season.

Here’s who to expect on the mound for the series:

Diamondbacks-Dodgers pitching probables

Friday, 6:40 p.m. — RHP Zac Gallen (10-6, 3.65 ERA) vs. LHP Clayton Kershaw (2-2, 3.72)

Saturday, 5:10 p.m. — RHP Merrill Kelly (4-0, 3.98) vs. RHP Gavin Stone (11-5, 3.33)

Sunday, 1:10 p.m. — RHP Brandon Pfaadt (8-7, 4.31) vs. TBA

Monday, 1:10 p.m. — LHP Eduardo Rodríguez (2-0, 5.06) vs. RHP Jack Flaherty (10-6, 3.07)

A big-time matchup between Zac Gallen and Clayton Kershaw gets the series started, and while neither have been operating at the peaks of their powers this season, Kershaw is still a left-handed pitcher, and Arizona has had troubles with lefties of late.

“We’ve been noticing we haven’t been hitting left-hand pitching very well. We’ve got the projected rotations, it seems like every team is reversing their rotation to throw lefties at us, and we got to get better,” manager Torey Lovullo said Thursday after the D-backs managed two earned runs in seven innings against lefty David Peterson.

The D-backs entered play on Thursday 14th in MLB with a .724 OPS against lefties in August. But tracking the last two weeks, since the start of Arizona’s nine-game road trip, that OPS has dropped to .590 (24th in MLB).

Missing right-handed hitters Ketel Marte, Christian Walker and Gabriel Moreno is part of why, but Lovullo expects the slack to be picked up.

Diamondbacks-Dodgers hitters to watch

D-backs: Josh Bell and Corbin Carroll each had four hits in the series loss to the New York Mets to pace Arizona, while the latter had three home runs, as many as the rest of the team combined. Carroll has been so consistent at the plate this month with at least one hit in all but two starts. Carroll’s power has been rounding back into form after a slow start out the gates, and his slugging over the last 30 days (.629) is good for top five in the NL.

Dodgers: Not far behind Carroll on that list is NL MVP favorite Shohei Ohtani. He has multiple hits in five of his last seven games entering Thursday and hit his 42nd home run of the season on Wednesday. The designated hitter also has stolen 42 bases and is one of each away from becoming the first player to have at least 43 of each in a season.

How to watch Diamondbacks-Dodgers

Three games will be televised on DBACKS.TV through channel 34 on Cox, while the Sunday matchup is available on Roku.

The radio broadcast for all four games will be available on the Arizona Sports app, 98.7 and ArizonaSports.com.

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