When 25-year-old Dodgers rookie right-hander Gavin Stone retired 24 Seattle Mariners batters over his stellar seven innings of two-hit shutout baseball before receiving any run support, many Dodger fans said – or at least thought – “Oh, great, he’s getting the Kershaw Treatment” – i.e., pitching a career game while his teammates’ bats remain silent.
“Definitely since the All-Star break, I felt good with everything pretty much,” Stone told SportsNet LA’s Kirsten Watson following the Dodgers eventual 3-0 shutout win over the Mariners. “You know, Will (Smith) did a great job calling pitches, so yeah, I felt like we were on the same page,” added the Lake City, AR native and Dodgers fifth-round draft pick in 2020 out of the University of Arkansas.
Along the way to his 11th win of the season (with five losses), Stone struck out a career-high 10 Mariners batters (four looking), including striking out the side in the top of the third inning.
“He’s been really good, the stuff has been really good,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of Stone postgame. “I think the first-pitch strike, efficiency, he’s flooding zone, I thought he and Will were in lockstep tonight, the curveball, the slider, the change-up, all of the secondaries, knew when to throw the two-seamer, and just kept those guys off balance all night.”
As for those (finally) three Dodgers runs, the first came on a one-out Gavin Lux solo home run to center field off of (wait for it…) former Dodger Yimi Garcia in the bottom of the seventh to put Stone in position for the win. This was followed by a hit-by-pitch of Smith, which was followed be a two-run/400-foot home run to right field by Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy in his first game back from the IL for an oblique strain.
“It was a really long three months for me and it was kind of, just like, you felt like your season started to get taken away a little bit,” Muncy told Watson postgame. “It was definitely special to be back out here and contribute on top of it,” said Muncy of his seventh-inning two run blast.
