Steve Webb
LOS ANGELES, CA — Gavin Stone is on fire right now. Heck, dude’s been on fire since the first day of Spring Training. Tuesday night’s quality start against the Giants (6.0 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 2 K) is just the latest in a series of solid performance’s from the Dodgers’ rookie hurler, made even more remarkable by the contrast with the version of Gavin Stone that we saw in 2023. Simply put, Stone is one of the most reliable arms on the entire staff right now, and it’s going to be hard to justify taking him out of the rotation anytime soon.
Let’s be honest. Last year was a bit of a disaster for the highly touted prospect. In fact, when Dustin May went down early in the year, it was thought that it would be he, and not Bobby Miller who would step up and fill the spot in the rotation vacated by May. At the time, Dave Roberts said that the elevation of Stone to the big league squad “made the most sense.” One could certainly see his reasoning; at the time, the flamethrowing Miller was still struggling with control issues in OKC. Miller’s ERA in the month of April was 5.40, which doesn’t exactly scream “Big League Ready.”
Both pitchers got starts in the wake of the May injury. But while Miller seemed to thrive on the mound at Chavez Ravine, Stone stumbled out of the gate. After three starts in May, his ERA sat an unsightly 14.40. After that, it was a spot start here or there, but he had definitely fallen off the edge of the earth as far as being a permanent part of the rotation was concerned.
“It was extremely hard,” said Stone of his rookie season when asked about it by the LA Times when he first arrived in Arizona this spring. “It definitely shakes your confidence. The biggest takeaway from last year was just how to deal with failure and how to come back from it,” said Stone. “All last year, I heard about how everybody has that moment of failure, and you just gotta figure out how to come out of it. So that’s the biggest key this year. Cleaning the mind and getting a fresh start.”
While Stone’s numbers were pretty brutal (he ended with an even 9.00 ERA), he Dodgers’ management was pleased with what they saw as progress during the year, especially when he returned to the roster in the late season to throw some decent innings down the stretch.
“Couldn’t have asked for more,” said skipper Dave Roberts of his young prospect. “The stat line, the surface is not everything we look at. So there’s a lot of things underlying from Gavin’s performance last year that were really positive.”
Dodgers pitching coached Mark Prior agreed with Roberts’ glass-half-full assesment: “Easier for me to say this probably than to live it, but I thought he had a great year. We view it as a successful campaign, more so because of what he went through and what he did, the strides he did make.”
Which brings us to 2024. Almost from the moment he set foot on the mound for the first time in Camelback Ranch, Stone looked like, in the words of play-by-play man Joe Davis, “a different dude.” Gone was the talk of Stone tipping his pitches, especially the changeup that hounded him last year. Instead, Stone exuded confidence on the mound. He finished the Cactus League with a ridiculous 0.93 ERA. He did see that balloon a bit with a rocky outing in the Freeway Series with the Angels, but wound up with a still very good 3.21 ERA for the spring.
It was between Stone and Michael Grove for who would fill the final spot in the rotation, ostensibly as a place holder until the anticipated return of Walker Buehler in May. At the press conference prior to the Seoul Series, Stone confirmed that he indeed was going to take the mound when the team returned to the United States. “Doc told me today that I was going to be the fifth starter,” Stone told reporters, “So I’m incredibly thankful for that. Incredibly appreciative for the opportunity, and I look forward to taking advantage of it.”
Take advantage he has. After a good, but not great, season debut against the Cardinals (5.0 IP, 3 ER), Stone threw his one and only clunker of the season. On a horrible rainy day on the North Side of the Chicago, Stone was undone by the elements (and some shoddy defense behind him) and he exited the game having surrendered five earned runs on the day. His ERA for the year once again sat at that uncomfortable 9.00. “Here we go again,” some Dodger fans must have been saying.
But the thing is, that was that. That day in Chicago marked the end of Stone’s early season struggles. He gave up two runs each in the next two starts, but then reeled off a string of fantastic outings: four straight starts where he went at least six innings and gave up just one run. In fact, in Tuesday’s game he came with a whisker of putting up a zero, but lost his shutout when Heliot Ramos‘s liner caromed off the glove of Gavin Lux to score the Giants’ only run off Stone in his six innings of work.
Here in mid-May Stone’s ERA stands at 3.27. That’s third among the Dodgers’ qualifying starters, just a tick behind Yoshinobu Yamamoto‘s 3.21. “He’s dependable,” said Dave Roberts after Tuesday’s win, using an adjective that nobody would have uttered about Stone last year. “He’s on a nice run now. This is who he is, and he’s only going to get better.”
