Dustin Mays struggles prove costly in Dodgers | College News
ATLANTA — Dustin May knew how key his sweeper can be this season.
“It’s going to be huge,” the Dodgers right-hander mentioned earlier this spring. “Being able to land that is probably going to be my biggest thing for the whole year.”
Lately, however, he’s studying there’s a flip facet to that coin, as effectively.
For as good as May’s Frisbee-esque breaking ball seemed, when he returned from a almost two-year absence by giving up just two earned runs in his first three begins, the pitch has been more inconsistent in the three outings since, dragging May’s total efficiency down with it.
In a 4-3 loss to the Atlanta Braves on Sunday at Truist Park, it was two dangerous sweepers — both to Braves slugger Austin Riley — that sank May on a night time the Dodgers noticed their seven-game successful streak stopped.
In the first inning, May had two strikes against Riley before throwing a sweeper up and over the plate. Riley launched it to left for a two-run homer.
In the third, May tried his sweeper again against Riley, throwing it over the periphery of the plate in a 1-and-1 depend. But Riley was on it once more, belting one other two-run blast that gave the Braves an early 4-0 lead.
“It’s pretty frustrating,” May mentioned. “Giving up two homers to him on kind of the same pitch, not really how I drew it up.”
Outside of those pitches, May was largely efficient. He obtained through 5 ⅔ innings. He struck out six batters. He didn’t give up any different runs.
“I thought the execution was a little better tonight,” May mentioned. “Being able to put the ball on the inner-half and outer-half of the plate.”
But for this new model of May — who, in search of higher health after two main elbow surgical procedures, has dialed back on his fastball velocity and drastically dropped the arm angle of his already considerably side-arm supply — even a couple of misplaced errors can spell hassle.
“I mean, ideally, the first one [should have been] more off the plate, definitely not up,” May mentioned. “The second one was OK, just too much plate.”
The Dodgers (23-11) still made it attention-grabbing at the tip.
Max Muncy trimmed the deficit in half on a fourth-inning RBI double and a sixth-inning run-scoring groundout.
Miguel Rojas got here off the bench in the sixth inning as a pinch-hitter for ice-cold outfielder Michael Conforto — who struck out twice and is six for 73 going back to early April — and hit a home run off left-handed reliever Dylan Lee to cut the rating to 4-3.
Teoscar Hernández hits a single in the third inning for the Dodgers against the Braves on Sunday.
(Mike Stewart / Associated Press)
But in the ninth, the Dodgers couldn’t full the comeback, stranding pinch-runner Hyeseong Kim at third base after he stole second off Braves nearer Raisel Iglesias and boldly dashed to third when a dropped third strike was thrown to first base.
“That was great. That was exciting,” Roberts mentioned of Kim’s aggressive baserunning, one of the instruments that attracted the membership to the South Korean utilityman in free company. “Those are things that, as he plays more and we start to learn more [about him], just shows that he’s got really good instincts.”
Still, for a banged-up Dodgers rotation wanting for another person to step up alongside employees ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, May’s latest regression has been the larger disappointment.
In his final three outings, the 27-year-old has yielded 14 runs in 16 innings.
And each time, an incapability to persistently land his sweeper has served as a source of frustration.
Two weeks in the past, when an total lack of command led to May getting knocked around at Wrigley Field by the Chicago Cubs, he was requested how tough it’s to achieve success when that pitch isn’t working.
“I think you can see how important it is,” he mentioned that night time.
May remained dissatisfied after giving up three runs to the Miami Marlins final Monday.
“I still wasn’t executing very well at all,” he mentioned then. “I just got away with some stuff.”
On Sunday against the Braves, it was a related story — May wanting pissed off with himself after two poorly executed sweepers, both of which have been adopted by Riley trotting around the bases.
“Ups and downs,” May mentioned of his opening month, in which he has a 4.36 earned-run average in six outings. “Couple good moments. Couple really bad ones. Definitely need to be more consistent.”
Especially when it comes to executing his sweeper, and utilizing it as a weapon to put hitters away.
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