Steve Webb
MIAMI, FL — Wow. Ryan Pepiot. In what was perhaps the best start by any Dodger pitcher this year, the rookie righty absolutely dominated the Miami Marlins on Thursday night and even flirted with perfection in a 10-0 drubbing of the Fish. He carried a perfect game into the seventh inning until it was broken up by a seeing-eye ground ball with two outs in the inning. Other than that, nada. In a week that has seen precious little good news on the starting pitching front, a performance like this gives Dodger fans a glimmer of hope for October.
“It was really fun to watch,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. “It was, obviously, his best big league outing. [He had] command all night. … Didn’t walk anybody. Man, we were all pulling for him. He keeps getting better every time he takes the baseball.”
Pepiot was sharp from the first batter. After Marlins starter Braxton Garrett put a zero on the board in the top of the opening frame, Pepiot went right to work in the home half. First, he induced a groundout from the NL’s leading hitter, Luis Arraez. Then, successive strikeouts of Jake Burger and Josh Bell and he was off to the races.
Though Pepiot dominated the outing, he was getting a lot of help from his defense as well. Amed Rosario made a couple of stellar plays at second, and Miguel Rojas flashed the leather at short. If the game had gone into the books as a perfecto, these plays would have become legendary parts of Dodger lore.
“It was like the fifth inning,” Pepiot said of when he realized he was working on a perfect game bid. “When I finished the fifth, no one was talking to me anymore. Then, I looked up and saw the zero. But yeah, everyone was sliding by me, and then no one would sit anywhere near me.”
Unfortunately, it was not to be. In the bottom of the seventh, after Pepiot had retired the first two hitters, switch hitter Josh Bell was able to reach down and get wood on a low-and-away changeup and poke it through the right side of the infield for a base hit.
“I was kind of hoping he would whiff on that one,” Pepiot said. “ after the game But it snuck through.”
But Ryan Pepiot had announced his arrival in the strongest way possible; he had handled a hot lineup (the Marlins had won six in a row) with ease, retiring 20 straight batters to start the game. It was a masterpiece.
“I think his ability to go to both sides of the plate is what’s kind of different [from last season] right now,” said Austin Barnes, who handled the catching chores for the Dodgers on Thursday. “But his ability to go to both sides of the plate now is really helping him through his little stretch right now. … He’s been throwing the ball really good.”
Offensively, everyone was getting in on the act. Though Garrett pitched pretty well, the Dodgers unloaded on the Marlins’ pen, scoring seven runs in the last four innings of the ballgame. Chris Taylor was the hitting star of the game, going 3-for-5 with a home run and five RBI. However, there were plenty more where that came from. Will Smith and Miguel Rojas both had three hit games, Mookie Betts was on base four times, and Freddie Freeman tied Johnny Frederick‘s 1929 franchise record for most doubles in a season with 52. Unfortunately for Freeman, that particular ball won’t be on his mantle as an overly zealous ball boy fielded the ball, and tossed it into the crowd as a souvenir. Oops.
In all, it was a 16-hit attack and very good to see after the offensive struggles of the last week or so. Hopefully, this game will fuel the Dodgers with the energy to finish the road trip in the nation’s capital on a good note. They play a three-game set in Washington against the Nat starting Friday at 4:05. Emmet Sheehan gets another crack at it on Friday night, followed by Bobby Miller on Saturday, making the Dodgers start three straight rookies. And then, I imagine, Dave Roberts is going to give Kershaw an extra day of rest and do a bullpen game on Sunday. We shall see.
Let’s go!
