Little has gone the way Walker Buehler anticipated since making his first career Opening Day start this season. Touted as the new ace of the Los Angeles Dodgers pitching staff, Buehler’s yet to find any consistent success and uncharacteristically struggled with his fastball.
Coming off a start in which he expressed a belief to have disappointed the Dodgers clubhouse up to this point in 2022, Buehler continued to struggle and turned in the shortest start of his career at 2.1 innings.
It also marked the first time in Buehler’s career he allowed at least four earned runs in back-to-back starts. The subpar performance prompted more questions around the right-hander’s work between outings, as Buehler notoriously is someone to make wholesale changes at times.
“We’ve been fiddling with kind of how I’m getting ready for starts for weeks now,” he said after the Dodgers’ 9-4 loss to the New York Mets. “I don’t think anything’s changing there. My preparation and the way that I try to go about my business is not going to change.
“We may do some different things and try and feel some things differently, but I’m trying to figure it out. I don’t like this any more than the next guy.”
Buehler’s night began on an encouraging note as he recorded consecutive strikeouts in the first inning. But a hanging curveball was punished by Francisco Lindor for a solo home run. Buehler followed that by striking out Pete Alonso.
Buehler stranded a pair of singles in the second inning before coming unraveled and failing to make it through the third. Consecutive walks to start the inning led to a Starling Marte RBI double. Alonso later hit a two-run home run to knock Buehler out of the game.
“Alonso and Starling Marte are two guys that, Starling Marte has been in this league a long time and Pete obviously is having a special season and has hit me well in the past,” Buehler said. But none of that really matters in terms of the mental calculation for me.
“I want to be good, I want to help our team win, and I’ve done that in the past and I want to get back to that.”
Buehler fastball velocity
If there was a silver lining for Buehler to take from the loss, there were multiple at-bats where his fastball had more life than what’s been seen through stretches of this season.
“It’s definitely kind of encouraging at one point of the night for me the fastball velocity being there a little bit and kind of throwing it where I wanted it a little bit more,” Buehler said.
“But to come out and punch out the first two guys and then hang a breaking ball is obviously not the way you want to start it. But at some point, you got to take the little victories and I guess coming out, I felt better with my fastball.”
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