First, a caveat. The Miami Marlins are not a good Major League Baseball team.
The rebuilding club has the second-most losses and second-fewest runs scored. On Wednesday night, its lineup featured only one hitter with a batting average above .262. Dominating the Marlins does not exactly portend postseason success.
Still, what Landon Knack did at loanDepot Park, in the Dodgers’ 8-4 win over their middling hosts, was impressive. Especially for a rookie pitcher auditioning for a potential postseason rotation.
In one of his best starts, Knack pitched five scoreless innings while giving up just two hits. He struck out seven, just one off his season high, while only walking two. Most importantly, he flashed the kind of stuff that could play come October, not only averaging a season-best 94.7 mph with his four-seam fastball, but also commanding it with nearly flawless precision.
“Felt really good to get things back on track a little bit, right from the rip,” said Knack, who was coming off a season-worst two-inning, five-run start against Atlanta last Saturday. “[I wanted to] really just kind of rip it from the beginning. Felt really good.”
In an unexpected development, Knack has been one of the most reliable pitchers on the Dodgers’ banged-up staff, an ever-changing group that seemingly has started to solidify in recent days.
After announcing that Tyler Glasnow is expected to miss the rest of the season over the weekend, manager Dave Roberts offered similar news Wednesday about right-hander Gavin Stone, saying the rookie star is “very unlikely” to pitch again this year as he continues to battle a shoulder injury.
Read more: Dodgers option Bobby Miller to triple-A again after another choppy outing
Stone hasn’t given up all hope yet, saying he wants to see how his shoulder feels once he starts playing catch again next week. But Stone’s return already is taking longer than expected, and with less than two weeks remaining in the regular season, there is hardly time left for him to build back up and be a potential postseason contributor.
The Dodgers also optioned struggling right-hander Bobby Miller to the minors Wednesday, all but ending a season in which he struggled to an 8.52 earned-run average. That leaves the Dodgers with only a handful of starting pitchers to round out a rotation headlined by Jack Flaherty and Yoshinobu…