baseball hates me<\/a>.\u201d He then proceeded to get walked off the next night, and again a week later.<\/p>\nNow, he is holding baseball\u2019s hottest bullpen together. Dodgers relievers have not allowed a run in 29 consecutive innings, the franchise\u2019s longest streak since at least 1998. This has come without Edwin D\u00edaz, whom the Dodgers gave $69 million and Scott\u2019s closer role to this offseason, and who is recovering from elbow surgery.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been a very important, stabilizing force,\u201d pitching coach Mark Prior said of Scott, who has a 1.37 ERA through 21 appearances and looks like the guy the Dodgers thought they signed two offseasons ago.<\/p>\n
Having Scott back to himself, manager Dave Roberts said, \u201chas helped us out big.\u201d<\/p>\n
So much of the story with Scott comes with what happens when the reliever gets to two strikes. No pitcher in baseball has enticed hitters to chase this season at a higher rate. A year ago, Scott\u2019s chase rate ranked in the 99th percentile according to Baseball Savant. His stuff can be overpowering, as long as it does not leak back over the heart of the plate. That\u2019s what happened far too often last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d get the two strikes, and I\u2019d leave the ball in the heart of the plate, and it was causing a lot of damage,\u201d Scott said.<\/p>\n
The Dodgers knew this and stressed the point to Scott last season. Scott knew this, too, but the struggles were already deep. When he did miss his spots, the ball wound up over the middle instead of out of the zone, where he might have been able to induce a swing-and-miss. Opposing hitters didn\u2019t miss, and Scott got crushed to the tune of a 4.74 ERA while serving up 11 home runs.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year was weird because he came in and he was throwing a ton of strikes,\u201d Prior said. \u201cProblem is, he was throwing strikes at the wrong times.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tanner Scott with two strikes<\/p>\n
202420252026<\/p>\n
ZONE%<\/p>\n
49.9<\/p>\n
51.3<\/p>\n
36.4<\/p>\n
WHIFF%<\/p>\n
19.3<\/p>\n
13.2<\/p>\n
21.6<\/p>\n
BA<\/p>\n
.107<\/p>\n
.182<\/p>\n
.114<\/p>\n
OBP<\/p>\n
.174<\/p>\n
.247<\/p>\n
.152<\/p>\n
SLG<\/p>\n
.145<\/p>\n
.303<\/p>\n
.182<\/p>\n
% of total PAs<\/p>\n
58.8<\/p>\n
62.1<\/p>\n
65.7<\/p>\n
Prior said Scott\u2019s uptick in strike-throwing, especially late in counts, was not the Dodgers\u2019 idea. Some of it, Prior said, is \u201cthe volatility of a pitcher.\u201d The club worked with him to make some tweaks to Scott\u2019s mental cues, trying to ensure that in the times when he inevitably missed, he didn\u2019t miss in spots where opponents could slug. Every step forward was followed by a step back.<\/p>\n
That isn\u2019t happening as much this season. When Scott has needed to get hitters to expand, he\u2019s done that. He\u2019s throwing fewer pitches in the zone with two strikes than he did even two years ago, when he was one of the most feared relievers in the game. Scott is trusting that the swings and chase will come, while avoiding the damage that destroyed his 2025 season.<\/p>\n
Maybe all Scott needed was a fresh start.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just tried washing it away,\u201d Scott said. \u201cLiterally, when January 1 happened, new year, new \u2014 just going back to what I used to do and just being yourself and trusting your ability and believing your stuff. (It\u2019s) kind of going out there with a \u2018F you, F it,\u2019 like mindset, and just rolling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scott spoke Monday afternoon at his locker in the visiting clubhouse at Petco Park, reflecting on all that went wrong in 2025. The next night, against a San Diego Padres club nipping at the Dodgers\u2019 heels, he showed what was going right.<\/p>\n
The left-hander entered a tied game with two on and two outs in the seventh and quickly got a two-strike count on Ram\u00f3n Laureano. Scott fired a fastball well above the zone that didn\u2019t elicit a chase. When he didn\u2019t execute a slider on the next pitch, leaving it up rather than in the dirt, Laureano crushed it to the warning track, where Teoscar Hern\u00e1ndez hauled it in.<\/p>\n
An inning later, Scott executed better.<\/p>\n
Against the right-handed Manny Machado, the reliever fired fastballs on the outer half of the plate and sliders that snapped just off the inside corner and down toward Machado\u2019s feet. Scott quickly got into an 0-2 count and proceeded to vary the looks that Machado was seeing \u2014 first a fastball down, then a fastball up and away, then another way up the ladder before challenging Machado over the plate. When Machado fouled them all off, Scott buried a slider in the dirt. Machado waved over it for a strikeout.<\/p>\n
Scott got a quick first-pitch out from Xander Bogaerts. Then, he refused to budge from his game plan against Jackson Merrill. He didn\u2019t throw a single pitch above the knees and was content to let Merrill walk. When Nick Castellanos quickly got into an 0-2 count, Scott didn\u2019t throw a single pitch in the zone.<\/p>\n
Eventually, Castellanos chased a full-count slider off the plate to get Scott out of the inning.<\/p>\n
Scott\u2019s four outs helped bridge things for the bullpen as the Dodgers capped a 5-4 victory.<\/p>\n
Scott is not eager to reflect on what has gone right for him this season. It is understandable to avoid declaring victory in mid-May. But this is the version of Scott he and the Dodgers were hoping to see. Each outing is building on the last. With that comes confidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo much of this game is just, do you feel confident in your stuff?\u201d Prior said. \u201cDo you feel confident? It\u2019s the chicken before the egg. \u2026 Do you get the results, or do you need results to build the confidence? Sometimes it\u2019s both, sometimes it\u2019s neither. But again, everybody gets a fresh start.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year just kept snowballing, and it just seemed like every time he was trying to come out of it, something would happen. \u2026 He\u2019s a good pitcher, and sometimes guys just have bad years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO \u2013 After a season in which he claimed baseball hates him, Tanner Scott reviewed all that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":687789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,1187,591,85],"class_list":["post-687788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}