ST. LOUIS -- From the way he was dealing down to the shoes on his feet, Justin Wrobleski reminded manager Dave Roberts of one of the greatest southpaws in Dodgers history.
Wrobleski has a long way to go until he can rightfully be compared to Clayton Kershaw, but the young left-hander has been nothing short of dominant since shifting to the Dodgers' rotation. L.A. has done nothing but win when Wrobleski starts on the mound, ending a season-high four-game skid with a 4-1 win over the Cardinals on Sunday afternoon at Busch Stadium.
The stopper his team needed, Wrobleski improved to 5-0. He has allowed just two earned runs in 32 innings as a starter. The leap forward he's taken this year hasn't exactly surprised the team -- after all, he's learned from the best.
"I think that as far as expectations on what we're going to get when we give him the baseball, it's right in line," Roberts said. "He's prepared, he goes after guys. He wears Skechers, like Clayton does. He does his side work with his full jersey, like Clayton did.
"He's got a great mentor in Clayton. And I think a lot of times, he's channeling that kind of, 'Go at guys and make them put the ball in play.'"
Wrobleski soaked up as much as he could while he was a teammate of the future Hall of Famer.
"Watching him and his everyday [routine] was something special for me," Wrobleski said, "because not everybody gets the opportunity to be around these guys that are legends of the game."
For the first time since Monday, the Dodgers got back in the win column, doing just enough against old friend Dustin May and the Cardinals' pitching staff to end their skid. The bats did not quite break out of their slump of nearly two weeks, but on Sunday, they did something they were unable to do during their skid: get on the board first.
After going down in order in the first inning, the Dodgers had something going when Kyle Tucker doubled and Max Muncy walked to open the second. With one out, Andy Pages gave L.A. its first lead of the series with an RBI double. Hyeseong Kim followed with a run-scoring single.
The Dodgers added on another run in the fifth inning, when Kim led off with a base hit and Freddie Freeman brought him home on a two-out single. It marked the first time since April 26 that L.A. scored more than two runs against a starting pitcher, and they tacked on an additional run in the ninth inning.
“There’s no way to sugarcoat it. We just haven’t been very good, and we’ve got to be better," Freeman said. "Luckily, Wrobo, our starting pitching, has been amazing. They deserve a lot more than they’ve gotten over the last two weeks. So it’s on us to start scoring some more runs. We know we’ll be fine."
As he has all season, Wrobleski effectively pitched to contact. He did not strike out a batter and induced only four whiffs, but he worked around six hits and a walk with relative ease. After he was done on the mound, the bullpen followed suit. The Cardinals struck for one run off right-hander Will Klein in the eighth inning, but Blake Treinen and Tanner Scott shut the door while recording the final four outs.
Wrobleski learned a lot from sharing a clubhouse with Kershaw for parts of two big league seasons. He remembers watching Kershaw's film as a prospect, and once he was called up to the Dodgers, he was able to glean a better understanding of how Kershaw approached his craft.
"I’d say from watching him, he was just going out there and kind of bullying guys with his stuff," Wrobleski said. "Not trying to trick anybody or do anything super out of the ordinary. He was just using his stuff the way he knew how, and the way he knew equated to success."
That is the mentality that Wrobleski brings to the mound, where he thrives off challenging hitters in the zone rather than chasing swing-and-miss. But while he may share handedness -- and shoe preferences -- with Kershaw, his Dodgers teammates aren't willing to draw the same comparison as Roberts just yet.
“No, not yet," Freeman said with a laugh. "Let’s let Clayton Kershaw be Clayton Kershaw.”
And by extension, let Wrobleski be himself. It's served him well thus far.