Despite missing their best player and the best third baseman on the planet the Guardians beat the Dodgers 5-3.
The Dodgers newest project Andrew Heaney, went 5 innings allowing 5 hits and 2 runs, only 1 of them earned. Heaney struck out 7 and collected 12 swings and misses, Heaney’s ERA is down to 0.59 on the season. So how have the Dodgers fixed Heaney? By changing his secondary pitch, Heaney hasn’t thrown a slider since 2016, and he has thrown a curveball every season since 2017. Heaney didn’t get great movement on his curveball, in 2021 it had 9% less vertical break and 33% less horizontal break than the league average curveball. So the Dodgers had Heaney drop the curveball and pick back up the slider. It has been a welcomed pairing to Heaney’s 4-seamer, so far this season the slider has a -1.6 RV/100, .206 xBAA, and a 45.6% whiff rate. Brusdar Graterol, Yency Almonte, and Daniel Hudson all threw scoreless appearances. Alex Vesia allowed an earned in his appearance, and Craig Kimbrel had another implosion of an outing allowing 2 hits, 2 walks, and 2 earned runs. His ERA is now up to 4.71 on the season.
7 of the starting 9 Dodgers had a hit except for, you guessed it, Max Muncy and Cody Bellinger. Wannabe Brave, Freddie Freeman hit a homer in the 3rd inning. Will Smith and Gavin Lux both hit doubles.
Shane Bieber got the start for the Guardians, his final statline, 6.1 IP, 7 H, 2 ER, BB, 9 K. Not a bad start you might be thinking, and yes while it wasn’t a bad start, it wasn’t great. The Dodgers were locked in on Bieber, of the 16 balls in play against Bieber, 10 of them qualified as hard hit. Bieber did collect 12 whiffs on his slider which has a -1.2 RV/100. Bieber has regressed in a lot of very important stats since his 2020 breakout. His K% went from 41.1% in 2020 to 25.6% in 2022, his xwOBA has gone from .251 in 2020 to .329 in 2022, and his xBA has gone from .186 in 2020 to .266 in 2022. Eli Morgan continued his excellent 2022 campaign by tossing a scoreless inning and two thirds, he has fantastic numbers on both his 4-seamer and changeup. Emmanuel Clase threw 10 pitches over 100 MPH, he even threw a 96.2 MPH slider, yes that is correct a 96.2 MPH slider. Of course his inning of work was scoreless.
Owen Miller, Josh Naylor, and Ernie Clement all had multi-hit games for the Guardians. Andres Gimenez hit a single in the 9th inning to break the 3-3 tie. Clement followed up the single by hitting a sac fly to extend the lead to 5-3.