Make no mistake about it, Dodgers right-hander Walker Buehler is back.
In his 11th start since missing considerable time recovering from his second Tommy John surgery on August 15, 2022, the 30-year-old Lexington, KY native and Dodgers first-round draft pick in 2015 out of Vanderbilt was outstanding in his 4.2-inning start, allowing four runs on five hits, while walking one and striking out four in the Dodgers 6-4 win over the Baltimore Orioles in front of a packed Dodger Stadium crowd of 53,290 on Shohei Ohtani Bobblehead Night on Wednesday.
“This is the first night I’ve seen the delivery, the tempo synced up,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of Buehler. “The ball was coming out really well. He’s worked his tail off with our pitching guys, the strength and conditioning guys, performance guys to get his body in a position to throw the baseball the way he threw the ball,” added the Dodgers skipper.
“In general, I think pretty encouraging. Obviously, my last start I kind of talked about feeling more like myself, and tonight I think it was that but more,” Buehler told reporters postgame.”
The unfortunate part of Buehler’s excellent start on Wednesday is that Roberts pulled him with two outs in the top of the fourth inning, thereby preventing him from completing the requsite five innings to qualify for what would have been his second win of the season (against four losses). That said, the hard-throwing Dodgers right-hander had already thrown 90 pitches (59 strikes), and building up his twice-surgically-repaired arm for a potential postseason run is paramont.
As for those six Dodgers runs and as a surprise to few (if any), the first came on a first inning leadoff home run by Ohtani, a 391-footer to right-center field, to give the Dodgers an early 1-0 lead.
Although Baltimore would counter with three of their own in the top of the second inning and another in the fifth, Dodgers left fielder Teoscar Hernández put the game on ice with his 28th home run of the season, a mammoth 431-foot shot into the Left Field Pavilion in the bottom of the third inning, to make it 5-3 Dodgers.
Play Ball!
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