Dodgers Team News
Dodgers: Dave Roberts Shares Thoughts on Kenta Maeda in Win
The Dodgers were able to bounce back from last night’s disappointing extra-innings loss and defeat the Diamondbacks 4-0.
Max Muncy got the offense going, veteran catcher Russell Martin chipped in with 2 hits and an RBI, but Kenta Maeda stole the show with his 7 inning shutout of the Diamondbacks. He allowed only 4 base runners — all hits — while striking out 6.
Dave Roberts talks about Kenta throwing with "conviction" tonight and executing his pitches better in 7 scoreless frames vs. Arizona. #Dodgers pic.twitter.com/jYjJFPy63J
— SportsNet LA (@SportsNetLA) August 11, 2019
After the game, manager Dave Roberts spoke about Kenta Maeda’s performance:
I think with Kenta, we use the word conviction a lot, on all of his pitches, and you could see the awkward swings that they were getting. Even later in the innings, some of the fly balls, they were still fly ball outs, with the fastball, and he was striking his fastball, he was getting ahead, he was getting back in the count with the breaking ball, then kind of mixing in the secondary pitches.
On some side with with pitching coach Rick Honeycutt.
Honey worked with some things as far as kind of getting his arm up a little bit, instead of kind of off to the side, that seemed to help a little bit. But tonight was really really good from Kenta, and to give us seven innings, I think that more importantly, it was good for our ball club, but more importantly for his confidence, the way he threw the baseball.
On Maeda’s overall stuff, Roberts continued.
One part is the sequencing, as far as throwing the fastball more, and the other part is the execution. So, now when he is throwing it, when he did throw it tonight, the execution was there, and you can see it against the left-handers, especially whether they were taking a fastball, or they were late on the fastball. His fastball has life, and when he throws it for a strike located, it beats the bat, and it just makes everything else play up.
Maeda earned his first win since May 31st as he looked to quell concerns about his rotation status. While the rest of the Los Angeles rotation has been lights out, the 31 year-old right-hander has struggled to the tune of a 0-3 record and 4.05 ERA in 6 starts and 33.1 innings pitched.
Again they hit Jansen hard, he was lucky to get off with just one hit and no runs being scored. He fooled no one.