During Friday’s loss against the Milwaukee Brewers, Max Muncy was plunked in the right wrist on an inside pitch from Aaron Ashby and was forced to leave the game. Although X-rays came back negative, he was out of the lineup on Saturday as Santiago Espinal got the start at third base.
Muncy will once again be out of the lineup for Sunday’s series finale in Milwaukee, and he will undergo an MRI on Monday once the team is back in Los Angeles, per Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register. Both Muncy and Dave Roberts are optimistic about his wrist, as his wrist guard caught some of the brunt from Ashby’s pitch.
“For me, I think we skipped the worst, because I’ve been hit in that spot before, and I’ve broken that spot before,” Muncy said after the game. “The biggest thing I always took with me from that was just the nauseous feeling that you get, and I didn’t quite have that tonight. So that’s why I’m feeling pretty optimistic about it.”
“I think we’re good right now,” Roberts said. “But once we get to Monday, get back home, I think we’ll see where we’re at to see if we need to get a CT scan on it.”
After allowing three runs in the first inning, Roki Sasaki completed four scoreless innings and earned the win on Saturday against the Brewers, his second winning decision in as many starts. Sasaki now has a sub-5.00 ERA for the first time since his early April, and Dave Roberts is seeing his gradual progression truly blossom, per Jackson Stone of MLB.com.
“It’s a sign of a young player really starting to grow up and understand his responsibility to the team,” Roberts said. “You need to take down innings and outs as a starting pitcher, and it’s not always going to be easy. That’s a learning moment that he could have folded, and last year it might have been tougher for him to get through that first inning, but he got through [it] and went four more scoreless.
“I’m really impressed because it seems like every outing he’s learning and getting better as a Major League pitcher.”
Teoscar Hernández has been hitting in the bottom third of the lineup routinely, but he’s been one of the Dodgers’ best hitters on this road trip, posting a .345 batting average with three home runs and 13 RBI. He was instrumental in Saturday’s 11-3 win over Milwaukee by going 3-4 with a home run and six RBI.
Dave Roberts has seen a great awareness of the zone from Hernández, as he has been more competitive in the box on the road trip, leading to drastically better results at the plate, notes Maddie Lee of the Los Angeles Times.
“For me personally, early on, I think that there was a couple of at-bats per night that he was just giving away. And now the last eight days, something like that, I don’t see him giving away any at-bats. And the production has reflected that.”