LOS ANGELES — With none of the pomp and circumstance of opening day, it was back to basics for both the Cardinals and Dodgers on Friday.
Nothing rules quite like good, old-fashioned pitching with a dash of new-wave velocity.
Basically, Bobby Miller dominated.
The Dodgers’ second-year right-hander struck out a career high 11 batters and was perfect through three innings. The Cardinals had a late uprising once Miller left the game, but it was too little to catch up with Los Angeles’ lead. All six of the Dodgers’ runs scored on homers in a 6-3 victory at Dodger Stadium.
Mookie Betts opened the game with a leadoff homer against Cardinals starter Zack Thompson. Teoscar Hernandez hit two of his against the lefty, and by the time the Cardinals mustered their first rally of 2024, they were down by six runs off four home runs. Dodgers No. 9 hitter Miguel Rojas added the final one in the seventh inning. For the first time in at least 112 years, the Cardinals have allowed six home runs in their first two games.
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Varying between his 100-mph fastball and his 80-mph curveball and all the movement he could create in between, Miller struck out six batters in his first spin through the Cardinals’ lineup. He is the 23rd pitcher since 1900 to have double-digit strikeouts against the Cardinals and the first to have at least 11 in the first games of any regular season.
Miller overpowers, overwhelms Cardinals
The latest in the ongoing line of power-packed Dodger pitching prospects, Miller struck out the side in the top of the inning on 15 pitches — signaling what was ahead for the Cardinals.
He struck out the first two batters he faced on the plunging changeup that he plays off his power fastball, and then, for the third bat, sliced a slider for the strikeout.
Miller had tied a career high for strikeouts with nine by the fifth inning.
He struck out 10 of the first 17 Cardinals he faced.
How did it was by whipsawing from overpowering velocity to overwhelming movement.
In the first inning, Nolan Gorman saw back-to-back 100-mph fastballs before Miller bent that 87.1-mph slider by him. The Dodgers’ right-hander was even more relentless during a nine-pitch at-bat against Jordan Walker to lead off the third inning. The nine pitches gave Miller a chance to show Walker all sorts of pitches — including a 99-mph fastball, a 94-mph slider, and a 99-mph sinker. As the at-bat went deeper, so did Miller. He tested Walker with a 100-mph fastball and then dropped an 80.5 mph curveball on him. The pitch, the ninth pitch of the at-bat, was back at 100-mph, 20 mph swifter than the previous one. Miller took advantage of the strike zone given him and the speed at which he could expand it.
Walker took the fastball for a called strike 3.
At one point in the game, Miller had four consecutive looking strikeouts, and all of them came from Cardinals looking at him for a second time.
Offense stirs, but it’s too late
The rolling threat the Cardinals expect from their offense this season arrived late but did arrive Friday night when it had a steeper hill to climb.
Helped along by a hit batter and a walk, the Cardinals put together a three-run rally. Nolan Gorman dropped a bases-loaded double into the right-field corner to take advantage of the gifts from Dodgers reliever Michael Grove. Nolan Arenado added a sacrifice fly to give two teammates a chance at cleaving LA’s lead down to a run. The inning stalled there with the Cardinals providing almost as many hits in one inning as they had in the previous 16 innings of the season and tripling their run total.
Masyn Winn initiated the rally with a leadoff single, his second hit of the game.
Winn gems
In back-to-back innings, rookie shortstop Winn showcased the defense that the Cardinals have urged him to focus on and let the bat develop over time. The belief from the Cardinals is that Winn's athleticism and arm strength at shortstop can change games, and while it did not shift Friday's in their direction it did keep it tidy for a bit.
In the fourth inning, Winn dove to his right to snare a sharp, bounding grounder, and he had the power to throw from near the grass in deep short for the out.
An inning later, he was the pivot on a key double play, and it took the former pitcher's arm strength at the turn to get the second out. The Winn's throw gave Thompson the double play that allowed him to go deeper into the game.
Mistakes hit hard for Thompson
The biggest bruises on the box score for Cardinals starter Thompson came on three poor pitches to two Dodgers hitters.
All of them landed in the seats.
All of them produced the five runs against him.
Thompson hung a slider on the third pitch of the game and Dodgers leadoff hitter Betts pulled it out to left field and beyond the wall for his third home run of the young season. In the second inning, Thompson left a 90-mph fastball up and floating on the far edge of the zone for Dodgers outfielder Hernandez to drive the opposite way and over the wall in the right field. Hernandez pulled on a tumbling curve in the fourth inning for his second homer of the game and three more RBIs.
All around those three pitches, Thompson found stretches of success, particularly with the pitches he spent all winter developing and all spring executing. Thompson held Shohei Ohtani hitless in three plate appearances, and there were times in the first six innings of the game that Thompson successfully landed a series of breaking balls without the floaters that Betts or Hernandez hammered.
Thompson’s new pitches — a sharper slider, a minimal-spin changeup, and a tightened curveball — have all defied the usual descriptions provided by Statcast data during the games. And, during spring, they defied hitters, too. For example, the second time Thompson faced Betts, he struck him out one the new changeup. The game data listed it as a strikeout on an 87-mph forkball. Thompson finished the second inning with a 93.5-mph fastball for a strikeout, and he was able to get a key groundball on a breaking ball to Ohtani.
With no outs and two runners on base in the fifth inning, Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol stuck with Thompson, his lefty, against Ohtani, one of the game’s best left-handed hitters.
Thompson got a double play from Ohtani on what he calls a “baby” curve.
Statcast saw it as an 81.9-mph slider.
Ohtani saw it as a groundout.
That double play allowed Thompson to press on deeper into the game and become the first Cardinals starter of the season to get an out in the sixth inning. He allowed five runs on six hits and two walks. All of the runs came on those three homers against him.
And Gorman makes two
The first five times through the Cardinals’ lineup this season and the only member of the group that had a hit was Paul Goldschmidt.
Miller retired the first 11 Cardinals he faced Friday night, giving the Cardinals not named Goldschmidt an 0-for-36 start to the season. They had three hits in the entire opener Thursday — all by Goldschmidt — and they were hitless with two outs in the fourth inning Saturday. Gorman, the Cardinals’ No. 3 hitter against right-handed pitchers to start the season, lined a pitch to right field to join Goldschmidt in the hit column.
The inning ended with Gorman on first.
In the sixth, the hitting worked its way around the infield with rookie shortstop Winn lifting his first hit of the season to right-center field. Goldschmidt followed two batters later with a walk to give the Cardinals their first look at Miller with a runner in scoring position. Gorman was back up with a chance to change the look of the scoreboard. He fouled off a full-count, 100-mph fastball from Miller to keep the at-bat going. Miller followed with a 98.1-mph fastball that Gorman missed to end the inning and the threat.
That was Miller’s 93rd pitch of the game.
Betts surpasses Mizzou’s Kinsler
Betts' leadoff homer was the 49th of his career, breaking a tie and moving alone into fifth place all-time. He had been tied with Ian Kinsler, the All-Star second baseman and former Texas Ranger who was also an All-American at Mizzou and contributed heavily to the Tigers’ recent search for a new baseball coach.
Betts has 29 leadoff homers as a Dodger for LA’s franchise record.