The Los Angeles Dodgers considered multiple options leading up to their series finale against the San Francisco Giants, including a potential bullpen game, but ultimately gave the start to Tony Gonsolin.
The right-hander took his normal turn in the rotation and managed to pitch through traffic as he completed five innings. “I thought I was mixing speeds pretty well,” Gonsolin said after the Dodgers’ 9-1 win.
“Tried to keep them off balance with some of my offspeed stuff and mixing in the fastball. Overall, I thought the defense played great behind me.”
Despite allowing the leadoff man to reach in three consecutive innings — including a home run to Brandon Crawford in the second — Gonsolin allowed just the one run on three hits and collected five strikeouts against one walk.
He improved to 2-0 with a 1.64 ERA and 1.09 WHIP through five starts this season.
“I feel like I’ve been executing pretty well,” Gonsolin said of his outings thus far. “Getting some soft contact early in counts is great. Just trying to execute pitches if I’m falling behind, or in general.”
Gonsolin, who had mentioned wanting to be more efficient in his outings, threw an economical 65 pitches over his five innings of work against the Giants. “That’s great,” he said of the low pitch count.
“It means I was getting some soft contact, some early contact after maybe longer at-bats. I know in that first inning there was a longer at-bat to Joc (Pederson), and then two quick ones.”
Roberts: Gonsolin was ‘fantastic’
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts felt Gonsolin bounced back nicely after an inconsistent start to his outing to give the club five innings. “He was good. He was really good,” Roberts said of Gonsolin.
“He left a first-pitch fastball out over for a home run to Crawford, but outside of that he sequenced well, got ahead. He was good. I just felt our ‘pen was in a good state with the off day [Thursday], so I felt a way to prevent runs was to go to the ‘pen right there.
“But I thought Tony was fantastic again.”
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