In 8⅓ scoreless innings since joining the Dodgers, Kopech has struck out 13 batters. Throwing a fastball at 102.6 mph, he secured his first save for Los Angeles on Friday.

It took a little bit to get there, but Michael Kopech finally found his way into a closing opportunity in Friday’s series opener against the Cardinals. He passed the test, as Kopech has with just about every chance since the Dodgers traded for him on July 29.

Kopech retired all three batters faced on Friday to record the save, his 10th of the season, but first since joining the Dodgers. Twelve different Dodgers pitchers have saves this season, with Landon Knack and his four-inning save joining the group on Tuesday in Milwaukee followed by Kopech on Friday.

That ties the Dodgers franchise record for most pitchers with a save in a season, along with the 2022 team. Only one major league team has ever had more than 12 pitchers with a save — the 2021 Rays had 14 such pitchers.

Kopech struck out Victor Scott II to open the ninth inning on Friday. His fifth pitch was fouled off, but still raised eyebrows by registering 102.6 mph, rounded to 103 on the television broadcast.

On the season, Kopech averages 98.7 mph on his four-seam fastball, which is in the 99th percentile among major league pitchers. He’s up a bit since joining Los Angeles, averaging 99.1 mph in his eight appearances. But just about everything has improved since donning a Dodgers uniform.

All eight Kopech appearances have been scoreless so far, totaling 8⅓ innings. He’s faced 27 batters and retired 25 of them, with 13 strikeouts. He allowed a single by Austin Hays on August 5, but since then opposing batters are 0-for-17, with a walk by William Contreras on Monday the only other blemish.

Home runs were an issue for Kopech with the White Sox, allowing eight in 43⅔ innings. That contributed to a 4.74 ERA and 4.85 FIP with Chicago. With the Dodgers his FIP is 0.41 to go along with a 0.00 ERA so far. It’s hard to hit home runs while striking out, or keeping the ball on the ground, as Kopech’s 61.5-percent groundball rate with the Dodgers would attest, up from 37.6 mph with the White Sox.

“For me it’s been a couple of things. For one, a change of scenery has been important for me because the start of my career didn’t exactly go the way I would have liked for it to have gone,” Kopech told David Vassegh for SportsNet LA on Monday in Milwaukee. “But also, coming to a team that is this invested in winning, that has so many moving pieces, you don’t have to have one guy going out there and by a hero or anything like that, necessarily.

“You have to come in, step in and do your job, and even if you don’t that day, you know there’s going to be guys that will pick you up.”

But back to Friday for a moment. Kopech’s 102.6-mph fastball was the fastest of his career. He had one other pitch register at 102.0 mph on April 9 with Chicago as well.

Kopech’s heater was also the fastest pitch by any Dodgers pitcher since July 3, 2009. Jonathan Broxton that night in San Diego struck out Padres third baseman Kevin Kouzmanoff to open the ninth inning, on a pitch that registered 103.3 mph. Later in the frame, Broxton threw a ball 102.8 mph to Eliézer Alfonzo, then struck him out on the next pitch.

That 103-mph pitch always stuck with me because I was at the game, part of a True Blue LA meet-up at Petco Park, which coincided with Manny Ramirez’s first game back from a 50-game PED suspension. The board in the left field wall in San Diego showed that Broxton threw a pitch 103 mph, and luckily I had my camera out at the time to capture the moment.

I rolled my eyes at the thought of a pitch being that fast at the time, and partially because of some suspected shenanigans with the Petco Park display board. But I had it wrong at the time, because what the Padres used to do was make pitches seem slower, which former general manager Kevin Towers admitted to in the case of Brad Penny, in an interview with Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic in 2011: