Phoenix: Brandon McCarthy has been the Los Angeles Dodgers’ best pitcher not named Clayton Kershaw this season. On Sunday, with his team in dire need of a good performance, McCarthy was the best he’s been so far.
The 33-year-old right-hander threw seven strong innings and got plenty of support with a six-run fifth inning in a 6-2 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Sunday.
The win prevented a three-game Arizona sweep.
After an injury-plagued first season with the Dodgers in 2016, McCarthy is 3-0 in four starts with a 2.25 ERA. “He’s just got a good look in his eye,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I like the word relentless and I think that right now he’s in that focused mindset and he’s relentless.”
After scoring 24 runs in the first two games of the series, the Diamondbacks managed only a first-inning, two-run home run by Paul Goldschmidt.
McCarthy (3-0) blanked Arizona on two hits after that. He went seven innings, allowing two runs on five hits with six strikeouts.
“I started hitting more spots,” McCarthy said. “The first couple of hitters I was just not commanding very well. Then at that point I got, not necessarily settled in, but just kind of got a grip on what I was doing and the ball started going closer to where I wanted it so it’s not as easy to give up hard contact.”
Shelby Miller (2-2) threw four shutout innings before walking the first two batters and giving up an RBI double to Corey Seager in the fifth. He threw one more pitch and left after a visit to the mound by the Arizona trainer. Miller had tightness in his right forearm.
He’ll have a precautionary MRI on Monday, according to Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo.
Lovullo said he got a signal from an Arizona player that something wasn’t right and made the decision to remove Miller from the game.
“These are tough things for me to address. It is really unfortunate,” Lovullo said. “Shelby has been throwing the ball really well. This is a minor setback for him but, numbers aside, you just hate to have a situation like this pop up.”
