Tony Gonsolin gives up 5 homers as Dodgers’ win streak ends
It was former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson who famously responded to a question about Evander Holyfield’s fight plan ahead of an upcoming bout, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
Dodgers pitcher Tony Gonsolin entered the ring on Friday night and received a blow to the chin for the second straight day when his second pitch of the game was thrown 400 feet into right center field for a home run by the Miami-designated batsman George Soler.
But unlike last Sunday’s game, when Gonsolin responded to a first-pitch home run with six shutout innings, he had no plan to fight the Marlins after absorbing that blow.
Miami beat the 29-year-old right-hander for 10 runs and eight hits — five of them home runs — in 3⅓ innings 11-3 win at Chavez Ravine, which saw Gonsolin battered and injured and ending the Dodgers’ 11-game winning streak.
“I don’t think his fastball had life left,” manager Dave Roberts said of Gonsolin. “He missed a lot of throws and when he needed momentum and misses or soft contact, he didn’t have that with his breakball and all his secondary throws. … He just wasn’t all-round perceptive.”
Gonsolin, an All-Star last year, hadn’t given up more than five earned runs or two home runs in any of his 70 starts, but he became the first Dodger since Hall of Famer Don Sutton in the year to give up five home runs in a game and a 5 4-4 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates on May 7, 1973.
It was a huge step backwards for a pitcher who felt Sunday’s win over the Colorado Rockies turned the tide in a hugely disappointing, injury-plagued season. Instead, Gonsolin fell to 8-5 with a 4.98 ERA, raising more questions about whether he deserves a playoff rotation spot and his health status.
Roberts has vaguely indicated that Gonsolin hasn’t been “at 100%” for several weeks, but after Friday night’s game he publicly admitted for the first time that Gonsolin has been struggling with an “arm problem” for four to six weeks.
Gonsolin, who missed the final five weeks of the 2022 season with a right forearm strain, said the condition is in his elbow and affecting his ability more than his command.
Roberts said the team’s medical staff assured him that Gonsolin would not cause further damage to his arm from a throw, but indicated the team would reconsider that approach, a decision that likely spelled a trip for Gonsolin to the injury list would mean.
Miami’s Jake Burger hits a triple home run against Dodgers pitcher Tony Gonsolin in the third inning on Friday.
(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)
“Tony goes out there and does what he can and sometimes his stuff is good, the fastball is good,” Roberts said. “But physically he’s not at 100 percent. I think we’ll join Tony [Saturday] and see if a punch, a pause, an escape from this makes sense.”
Would the Dodgers have closed Gonsolin in early July if their rotation hadn’t been so severely ravaged by injuries at the time?
“No, not necessarily,” Roberts said. “There are very few pitchers who get 100%. If you don’t want to make what you’re dealing with worse, you can take the ball and you have the speed and you have the stuff and you feel like you can get batsmen out of the major leagues… I think he has earned and deserves the right to go out and start.”
The Dodgers responded to Soler’s volley with a long ball of their own. Mookie Betts leveled the score with a 420-foot shot that sent Miami ace Sandy Alcantara down the middle late in the first through, giving Betts a franchise-record 11 Lead gave Homer this season and 47 in his career.
Gonsolin pulled the team back in turn in the second inning, but Soler took the lead in the third inning, pulverizing a 93-mph fastball and hitting his 32nd home run of the season 441 feet into the left-center pavilion sent the Marlins a 2-1 lead.
Josh Bell went with an out, Jazz Chisolm hit a single and Jake Burger hit a three-run homer – his 27th of the season – for a 5-1 lead. Jesus Sanchez hit a two-out single, and Jacob Stallings capped the six-run breakout with a two-run home run to center for a 7-1 lead.
With a split-doubleheader scheduled for Saturday, Roberts sent Gonsolin back up the mound for the fourth time in hopes his starter could gobble at least a few more innings to save the bullpen.
The Marlins foiled that plan when Soler walked ahead, Luis Arráez doubled to the right and Chisolm hit a superb drive just inside the right field foul bar for a three-run home run and a 10-1 lead, which Roberts pulled Gonsolin in favor of right-hander Gus Varland.
“I thought the ball came out pretty well today,” Gonsolin said. “I thought I had thrown some good shots that hit really hard, but overall I feel like I just didn’t throw them very well. I’ve fallen behind on a lot of points, I’ve walked a lot of people… and I’ve stuck our bullpen in a dead end [crappy] Situation.”
Varland pitched 1⅔ innings for the Dodgers and gave up a run, left-hander Victor González pitched two scoreless innings, left-hander Alex Vesia added a scoreless eighth, and shortstop Miguel Rojas made his second pitching appearance of the season and retired with the team Order in the ninth.
Because the score was so lopsided, Betts, first baseman Freddie Freeman and right fielder Jason Heyward were all put out in the fifth inning, with Heyward leaving the game after sustaining a hip injury on a sliding catch.
Alcantara, the 2022 National League Cy Young Award winner, conceded solo homers against Max Muncy — 29th of the season for the Dodgers’ third baseman — in the fourth and James Outman (his 15th) in the fifth, the only other errors up a start with six innings, three runs, seven hits and six strikeouts that improved the right-hander to 6-10 with a 4.11 ERA.
