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Craig Kimbrel is no longer on the Dodgers’ 40-man roster, opening up a potentially significant number of save opportunities on one of the league’s best teams. However, even if Kimbrel was still with the Dodgers, given his struggles it’s likely that Graterol – not to mention a number of other relievers – would be in the mix for saves here. Veteran left-hander David Price made his second spot start since returning from the injured list. He began the bullpen game by retiring all eight batters he faced, striking out five.
Muncy leads all major league first basemen with five defensive runs saved, according to Fangraphs. In the third inning, Muncy scorched the first pitch he saw – another Garcia fastball – over the fence in right field for a two-run homer. Anderson allowed a home run to the first batter of the game, Lewis Brinson, who had also homered the previous night off a fastball too.
Dodgers win on walk-off home run by Max Muncy
He leads MLB in Baseball Reference’s version of Wins Above Replacement. That doesn’t sound like innocent chatter before the start of a playoff series. Home plate umpire Chris Segal is off to a rough start in Game 2 of the Los Angeles Dodgers-San Diego Padres series, as he gifted Max Muncy a home run. After James Outman singled and Mookie Betts doubled to start the third inning, Trea Turner’s sacrifice fly extended the Dodgers’ lead.
Muncy’s dominance of the Giants has eclipsed a single moment against a single pitcher. LOS ANGELES — The essential moment of Max Muncy’s highlight reel against the San Francisco Giants, if not his entire career, came on June 9, 2019. On that sunny Sunday afternoon, Muncy hit a home run against Madison Bumgarner that landed in San Francisco Bay.
Max Muncy’s home run lifts Dodgers over Giants
Muncy said he would have preferred a Dodgers win Sunday over a personal milestone, but he did receive a nice surprise when he got to the clubhouse after the game. A clubhouse employee had already retrieved the 100th home run ball, which Muncy exchanged for an autograph to the fan who caught the ball. His mind filled with self-doubt and his swing in need of renovation, Muncy strongly considered retirement before signing a minor league deal with the Dodgers on April 28, 2017. One hundred big-league homers may not seem like much for a guy who will turn 31 in August, but it is when you consider Muncy’s backstory. The Dodgers are getting the best version of Anderson, whose 2.73 ERA ranks fifth among qualified National League pitchers. With former Dodger Alex Wood on the injured list, the Giants turned to a bullpen game to try to steal back-to-back wins at Dodger Stadium.
With Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith, and Max Muncy leading the way, the Dodgers offer one of the most fantasy-friendly environments for counting stats, especially RBI and runs scored. Elsewhere, the Dodgers have more pitcher wins – 458 to be exact, and 18 more than the next closest team – since 2018 despite utilizing a variety of different starters during that span. In short, there’s plenty to like fantasy-wise about the 2023 iteration of the Dodgers, though as with all teams there are a few players to stay away from in fantasy drafts. Muncy made the National League All-Star team in 2018, but he’s taken his game to another level in 2021. He enters Monday night’s game against the St. Louis Cardinals with a .281 average, a major league-best .442 on-base percentage, a 1.005 OPS, 13 homers, 30 RBIs and a major league-leading 43 walks in 51 games. The infielder hit .170 with a .200 on-base percentage, a home run, and a stolen base in a tiny 50-plate appearance sample size for the Dodgers last year.
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As of writing this, Justin Turner, Craig Kimbrel, and Joey Gallo all remain free agents. We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions. J.P. Hoornstra covers Major League Baseball and is the author of 'The 50 Greatest Dodger Games Of All Time.' He once recorded a keyboard solo on the same album as two of the original Doors.
Smith turned at the last second, the ball hit the back of his shoulder blade, and the catcher took his free base. It was here at Dodger Stadium that Muncy fractured a finger when he was struck by a pitch in batting practice. At the time, he said he could not see the baseball out of the pitcher’s hand. The Dodgers subsequently altered the center field “batter’s eye” backdrop to make the baseball more visible from the batter’s box. Anderson was a member of the Giants’ rotation for the 2020 season. The numbers suggest he was a different pitcher then; Anderson put up a 4.37 ERA in 13 games during the pandemic-shortened season.
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Flashing a cut fastball that touched 96 mph, Jansen struck out two of the three batters he faced. Peters’ homer, a solo shot in the fifth inning, was the first home run of his career. Turner’s home run, his ninth of the season, immediately followed a Mookie Betts triple in the third inning. “Max, I think you could argue, is one of the best two or three baseball players in the game right now,” Manager Dave Roberts said.
Muncy whacked the fourth pitch he saw into the right-field pavilion for a walk-off, three-run home run, sending the Dodgers (56-35) to the All-Star break with a 7-4 win. Heaney was on the hook for a loss until the fifth inning, when Betts singled and Smith’s shoulder absorbed the changeup from Clevinger, setting up the big home run by Muncy. Thanks to a recent hot streak, Muncy’s batting average is up to .170, the highest it’s been since July 5. And yet, the Dodgers are turning the season series with San Diego into a lopsided affair. They are 7-2 against the Padres this season, having outscored them in the nine games. Muncy’s 11th home run of the season put the Dodgers ahead for good en route to an eventual 8-3 victory over the Padres, their MLB-leading seventh straight victory.
Freddie Freeman and Will Smith then followed suit with an RBI single and run-scoring double, respectively. Muncy capped the scoring with a solo home run in the sixth inning, an opposite-field shot, off right-hander Dominic Leone in the sixth inning. The Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the San Francisco Giants, 7-2, to become the first team to 100 wins this season. They also accomplished the feat as the fastest team in Dodgers franchise history. Albert Pujols led off the bottom of the inning with a single to lock the Diamondbacks in a bind with no obvious answer.
Essentially, the veteran is getting beat in the zone a lot. His zone swing-and-miss rate was the third-highest among batters with at least 250 plate appearances. What’s more, he wasn’t anywhere near as effective against four-seamers as he was in the past. Gonzalez allowed a two-run home run to Donovan Solano in the top of the sixth inning, tying the score at 3-3. Muncy, down to an 0-and-2 count after fouling off three straight pitches from Wood (5-2), responded with his 11th home run of the season in the bottom of the sixth.
He corrected an obvious, season-long flaw with one swing Saturday. Too often this year, Muncy has swung underneath a pitch he might have hit for power in the past. He’s hit no fewer than 35 home runs in a full season since 2018; this year he is on pace for 17.
Turner collected his second RBI of the night on a single in the fourth inning. The Dodgers’ offense jolted awake in the eighth inning with help from the bumbling Diamondbacks. With the bases loaded and no outs, Turner skied a routine fly ball to the warning track in right field, where former Dodger Josh Reddick, the recipient of boos all weekend, dropped it.
Between Muncy’s two home runs and a three-run shot by Joey Gallo in the second inning, the Dodgers collected all of their runs by virtue of the home run. After sloppy defense allowed the Giants to take a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning, the Dodgers quickly erased their deficit and never looked back. The club was hopeful that he would return at the beginning of July until he suffered a setback. Now the Dodgers eye Seager returning for the team’s first homestand out of the All-Star break. The three runs were unearned by virtue of the error, but it turned the Dodgers’ 2-0 lead into a 3-2 deficit. Bill Plunkett graduated from Michigan State with a bachelor's degree in journalism.
By not allowing an earned run in 4 ⅔ innings, Heaney lowered his earned-run average for the season to 0.64. According to Stats Perform, that’s the lowest ERA in at least 25 innings by any pitcher over his first six starts since Fernando Valenzuela (0.33) in 1981. The solid contact of a record-setting 22-run, 21-hit, eight-home run game still reverberating off the hills in Chavez Ravine, the Dodgers went quietly for the first seven innings Sunday afternoon, managing just one run on five hits. But they rallied for three runs in the eighth inning to tie the game and won it on Muncy’s walk-off home run in the ninth, beating the Arizona Diamondbacks, 7-4, on Sunday afternoon.
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