Despite the bullpen ultimately squandering a late lead, Los Angeles Dodgers right-hander Kenta Maeda registered another solid performance against the Miami Marlins in what was his fourth start of the season.
He logged six innings in the contest and allowed just one earned run on four hits. Furthermore, Maeda tallied seven strikeouts while yielding only one walk. With a reasonable pitch count of 82 after six frames, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts opted to remove Maeda from the game.
He explained that such a decision was made after determining that the 30-year-old showed signs of laboring on the mound, via SportsNet LA:
“In my opinion, he threw 106 his last turn. So right there, where he was at, to have him start at 86 pitches, another inning, I felt he started to labor a little bit that sixth inning. He got a couple groundouts, weak contact, maybe a fly ball. But he was working a little bit harder for me. The deep breaths, the pace was slowing up a little bit, and I just felt the stuff was starting to get a little bit short.”
As Roberts notes, Maeda was coming off a lengthy start against the San Diego Padres last week that saw him throw 106 pitches in just 5.2 innings.
Maeda was tabbed for a season-high eight hits and four earned runs in that outing, but still accumulated 10 strikeouts, which certainly contributed to his high pitch count.
After taking out Maeda, Roberts summoned Daniel Hudson for his Dodgers debut. The nine-year veteran tossed a scoreless seventh inning of work with two strikeouts.
The Dodgers would take the lead in the bottom of the frame, but the next two innings didn’t go as planned. Tony Cingrani allowed the tying run to score following a controversial balk, and Pedro Baez later surrendered the go-ahead run in the ninth after a Cameron Maybin double gave the Marlins the lead.
