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He was selected by the Oakland Athletics in the fifth round of the 2012 Major League Baseball draft. He played in MLB for the Athletics in 2015 and 2016, and later joined the Dodgers in 2018. Chris Martin threw a scoreless eighth inning in relief of Anderson, and Craig Kimbrel recorded his 22nd save with a ninth inning.
The verbal barb Muncy hurled back at the mound – “go get it out of the ocean” – still rings familiar on both sides of a rivalry. Your favorite teams, topics, and players all on your favorite mobile devices. The veteran hurler delivered what should have been strike three, and froze Muncy as a result. As Andrew Heaney needed 27 pitches to get through the first inning.
Dodgers’ Max Muncy hits his 100th career home run: ‘It’s a pretty cool number’
The difference between first and second place in the National League West is 14 ½ games. When Betts led off the bottom of the first inning with a home run off Diamondbacks starter Merrill Kelly, it was the ninth home run the Dodgers had hit in nine innings at bat against the Diamondbacks. Elsewhere, Lux could stand to benefit from the larger bases coming into play next season. The 24-year-old registered just seven stolen bases last season but finished in the 88th percentile in Statcast’s sprint speed metric. With his versatility, if he can double his stolen base output while continuing to see significant RBI opportunities in Los Angeles, Lux will have plenty of fantasy upside next season.
This season, Muncy’s batting average fell as low as .207 before he discovered his pre-finger fracture form on May 9. Of his 11 home runs this season, eight have come in the 20 games since. Muncy needed more time to recover from the fracture than a 60-game regular season allowed. Not until the postseason, Roberts said, did Muncy regain the confidence he needed to turn on an inside pitch without fear. The Los Angeles Dodgers received another complete effort from their lineup to defeat the San Francisco Giants, 8-2, and earn the first road win by either team in the season series. Furthermore, the Dodgers are on a five-game winning streak against the Giants.
Advanced Batting
The Dodgers otherwise went silent, typical of the team’s feast-or-famine duality this season. He has three career walk-off homers, including the postseason. He then hopped on a flight to Denver with the Dodgers’ contingent — close to 50 people in all — as one of the team’s five All-Stars. Heaney struck out Josh Bell on a 95.4-mph fastball in the first inning. It was the hardest he’s thrown a baseball in 2022, a season twice interrupted by long trips to the injured list to rest his left shoulder.
Muncy stepped out of the batter’s box and called time before Wood could complete his next windup. He grounded out, waited patiently for a mistake, and finally got one in the sixth inning. The Dodgers never trailed en route to their 13th victory in their last 15 games. Their resurgence has coincided with that of Muncy, whose 2020 season got off to a poor start when summer camps convened last June. Alex Vesia, Joe Kelly, Gonzalez, Nate Jones and Blake Treinen bridged the gap to closer Kenley Jansen, who pitched a scoreless ninth inning for his 12th save of the season.
Dodgers: Max Muncy Reflects On Historic Home Run
He corrected an obvious, season-long flaw with one swing Saturday. Too often this year, Muncy has swung underneath a pitch he might have hit for power in the past. He’s hit no fewer than 35 home runs in a full season since 2018; this year he is on pace for 17.
With Trea Turner’s decision to leave the Dodgers and join the Philadelphia Phillies via free agency, it all but solidifies a significant role for Gavin Lux next season. Of course, Lux had a significant role last season with the Dodgers as well, hitting .276 with a .346 on-base percentage, six home runs, and seven stolen bases in 471 plate appearances for the National League West club. Clayton Kershaw is back and the team’s lineup, which led baseball in runs scored last season, should once again be among the sport’s best.
The Dodgers start the series off against the Braves with an 8-3, come from behind win in Atlanta. Max Muncy led the team tonight with 3 RBI’s, and the bullpen stepped up allowing no runs through 4.1 IP. It was good to see Julio Urias and Adam Kolarek take care of business. Yu Darvish is one of the more dominant pitchers in all of baseball when he’s on, but he’s not getting any favors from home plate umpire Chris Segal. Smith collected his second RBI double of the night in the fifth inning, Turner’s leadoff home run in the seventh extended his hitting streak to 19 games, and Freeman added an RBI single in the ninth for good measure. In the third game of 2018 World Series against the Boston Red Sox, Muncy scored the tying run in the 13th inning and then hit a walk-off home run in the 18th, concluding the longest game in World Series history after seven hours and 20 minutes.
As of writing this, Justin Turner, Craig Kimbrel, and Joey Gallo all remain free agents. We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions. J.P. Hoornstra covers Major League Baseball and is the author of 'The 50 Greatest Dodger Games Of All Time.' He once recorded a keyboard solo on the same album as two of the original Doors.
Will Smith was then hit by a pitch with the bases loaded and Chris Taylor tied the score with a single. Dodgers starter Andrew Heaney limited the damage against him to one inning, the fourth. It ended with the Padres hitting balls 104, 100, 108 and 98 mph, sandwiched around a fielding error by Dodgers second baseman Gavin Lux. Taylor, who like Lux has considerable experience playing across the diamond, has been a quality fantasy option ever since his first full season with the Dodgers during the 2017 campaign. He’s been a quality option for fantasy managers with his ability to collect home runs and stolen bases while possessing eligibility at a number of positions. Throw in his increased run and RBI totals playing for a Dodgers club that has scored the second-most runs in the league since 2017 and you have a player who has been crucial in determining fantasy championships at times.
Freddie Freeman and Will Smith then followed suit with an RBI single and run-scoring double, respectively. Muncy capped the scoring with a solo home run in the sixth inning, an opposite-field shot, off right-hander Dominic Leone in the sixth inning. The Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the San Francisco Giants, 7-2, to become the first team to 100 wins this season. They also accomplished the feat as the fastest team in Dodgers franchise history. Albert Pujols led off the bottom of the inning with a single to lock the Diamondbacks in a bind with no obvious answer.
Because of being on a pitch count, Heaney only completed four innings, but did hold the Giants to just the one run scored in the opening frame. Much of the play-by-play, game results, and transaction information both shown and used to create certain data sets was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by RetroSheet. Sign up for the free Baseball Reference newsletter and get scores, news and notes in your inbox every day.
Flashing a cut fastball that touched 96 mph, Jansen struck out two of the three batters he faced. Peters’ homer, a solo shot in the fifth inning, was the first home run of his career. Turner’s home run, his ninth of the season, immediately followed a Mookie Betts triple in the third inning. “Max, I think you could argue, is one of the best two or three baseball players in the game right now,” Manager Dave Roberts said.
Bukauskas left a 2-and-1 fastball over the plate to Muncy who put an end to the game with the Dodgers’ 11th home run of the series. Freddie Freeman is entrenched at first base and will get most or all of the starts there. Second base could be an option for Vargas, though if the Dodgers add a shortstop via trade or free agency, Lux, Max Muncy, and Mookie Betts are all on hand as potential options to see time at the keystone. Third base is probably Vargas’ best bet for consistent playing time, but Muncy could also see a significant number of starts there, as could Chris Taylor. The 24-year-old reliever turned in a strong season for Los Angeles in 2022, logging a 3.26 ERA and a 2.95 FIP in 49.2 innings of work. He didn’t overwhelm with strikeouts (7.79 per nine innings) but allowed just 1.81 walks and 0.54 home runs per nine frames while registering a career-best 10.9% swinging strike rate.
And he might once again reach double digits in home runs and steals. But if the quality of contact numbers repeat themselves, you might be better off looking elsewhere in drafts for versatile bench options. Taylor logged a .277 xwOBA in 2022, the lowest of his career since 2015 when he had 151 plate appearances in his first season in the Majors with the Mariners. His xwOBAcon also dipped considerably, going from .415 in 2021 to .379 this past season.
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