The Dodgers have opened up their second homestand on a strong note after a successful road trip where they averaged 8.67 runs per game and took five of six contests. While players such as Andy Pages and Freddie Freeman flourished over the six-game stretch, Max Muncy looked as if to be starting the season on an opposite note.
Muncy had only four hits and two walks across 25 plate appearances away from home and was out of the starting lineup in the series finale against the Washington Nationals, and returned home hitting just .216 with a .623 OPS. In his first game back at home, Muncy lit a spark and had a monstrous three-home run game, the last of which being a walk-off home run to give the Dodgers an 8-7 victory over the Texas Rangers on Friday.
Advertisement
The early results so far are indicative of the offseason regiment that Muncy underwent this past offseason, which included losing 17 lbs, and he is feeling much healthier than he was at the end of the World Series, per Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register.
“Most importantly, I feel like my feet are moving on every ground ball,” Muncy said. “That’s something I’ve always struggled with in the past. I just get stuck a little bit, and that puts me in bad positions on certain hops, but I feel like everything is moving fluidly and I just feel healthy.”
Links
It took two weeks of regular season play for Shohei Ohtani to hit his first home run in front of the home crowd, and it came via a leadoff shot in Saturday’s win against Texas that also extended his league-leading on-base streak to 45 games.
Courtney Hollman of MLB.com notes that play-by-play announcer Stephen Nelson alluded to Dave Roberts predicting that Ohtani’s first extra-base hit and RBI at home would come on Saturday.
“I know Ohtani doesn’t have an extra-base hit or an RBI yet here at home,” said Roberts (via Nelson on the air). “Kinda crazy. But trust me it’s coming, and I think it’s coming tonight.”
After a rough pair of starts to open the season, Emmet Sheehan managed to toss a quality start and earn the win on Saturday by allowing three earned runs while striking out six and walking one over six innings.
Advertisement
Sheehan was utterly dominant against the majority of Texas’ lineups, with the only mistakes being a pair of home runs from Brandon Nimmo. He noted to Kirsten Watson of SportsNet LA that he’d prefer to have those mistake pitches back, but felt better on the mound compared to his two previous starts.
“There’s some pitches that I wanted to have back there, but delivery-wise, throw-wise, everything felt a lot better. The stuff was playing and I was executing a lot better today, so definitely a step in the right direction.”
Read the full article here
