Baseball’s best team will encounter one of the game’s hottest young pitchers when the Los Angeles Dodgers face a test from New York Mets right-hander Nolan McLean on Tuesday.
In 11 career starts going back to last season, McLean has allowed two or fewer earned runs in 10 of them, including all three outings this season. His next challenge will come against the two-time defending champions, who are an MLB-best 12-4 to start the season.
The Dodgers turned a three-run homer from Andy Pages and eight scoreless innings from left-hander Justin Wrobleski into a 4-0 series-opening victory Monday.
On Thursday, McLean (1-1, 2.70 ERA) gave up two runs on three hits over 6 1/3 innings with two walks and eight strikeouts but ended up with the loss against the visiting Arizona Diamondbacks. It was just the second loss in McLean’s young career.
McLean was able to keep the runs to a minimum despite some inefficiency. Two of the three hits he allowed were singles, but he threw a career-high 100 pitches in the outing.
“Curveball has been feeling good,” McLean said. “It definitely felt good (Thursday), landing it for strikes rather than just a chase pitch for me. So I was excited to see that.”
In his Mets debut on Monday, outfielder Tommy Pham went 0-for-3. Pham was signed to a minor league deal late in the spring and played in five games at Single-A St. Lucie before getting the call to begin his 13th major league season. He also played 79 games with the Mets in 2023.
“I know how to play the game. I love the game,” Pham said Monday. “That’s what you get. One thing I told myself this year, I’m going to go harder. I was thinking I want to leave everything on the table. So that’s what I got for you.”
The Dodgers will counter Tuesday with right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto (2-1, 2.50), who gave up one run on five hits and a walk with six strikeouts over six innings in a road win over the Toronto Blue Jays on April 7.
The outing was an improvement on what Yamamoto felt had been a slow start to his season.
“I started feeling even better and I was able to carry that into (the) game,” Yamamoto said through an interpreter. “So that’s why I was able to control my pitches, both fastball and then also offspeed. I think I was able to efficiently mix in my pitches.”
Yamamoto’s dominance over the Blue Jays continued after he was the winning pitcher in Games 6 and 7 of last year’s World Series.
Now comes his second career regular-season start against the Mets after he allowed four runs (three earned) over six innings of a no-decision in April 2024.
Wrobleski gave up a pair of singles in his eight innings Monday, while New York finished with three singles in the game. Pages’ home run was his fifth of the season. He leads the major leagues with a .417 batting average and 20 RBIs. He is third with a 1.186 OPS.
“It’s just more staying in the zone and hitting pitches that are in the zone, as opposed to expanding my zone,” Pages said through an interpreter about his early-season success following some October struggles when he was benched during the World Series.
–Field Level Media
