Ryu's dominant start marred by Yelich HRs

MILWAUKEE -- The Dodgers are like most teams when it comes to Christian Yelich. They don’t know what to do.

They had Hyun Jin Ryu pitch to Yelich on Saturday night, and he hit two homers. They had Caleb Ferguson walk Yelich to get to a slumping (0-for-13) Ryan Braun, and Braun crushed a three-run homer in a 5-0 Brewers win that snapped the Dodgers’ win streak at six. They kept picking the wrong poison.

Yelich sent a 1-2 changeup down and in over the opposite-field fence for a third-inning homer off Ryu, then ambushed a first-pitch Ryu curve into the second deck in right to lead off the sixth inning. After Ferguson allowed a two-out double to Lorenzo Cain, manager Dave Roberts intentionally walked Yelich with Braun and his .174 batting average coming up. Braun sent a rocket on an 0-1 fastball into the Brewers’ bullpen in left-center.

“Look at what Yelich has done, how he swung the bat tonight, a base open, the game is still in the balance,” explained Roberts. “You look at Braun, who I have a ton of respect for, but Fergie has weapons to get lefties and righties out. Just a guy who’s swinging a hotter bat and you definitely have to take your chances with the other guy. We didn’t execute a pitch, and Braun took a good swing on it.”

Braun couldn’t remember a similar scenario in his career but couldn’t criticize the strategy, either.

“If you look at my career numbers, I've been obviously pretty good against lefties,” said Braun. “This year, I've been bad against everybody, and Yeli has been impossibly good. The combination of those two things, it obviously made a lot of sense for them to do what they did. But I don't remember that ever happening before."

Yelich has four homers in the first three games of this series and has broken the Brewers’ records for the fastest to reach 13 home runs and 31 RBIs. He has three homers in 10 career at-bats against Ryu.

“He’s tough,” Roberts said. “You can stay away, but he has the low swing path. You can try to crowd him, but he can hunt balls in and cover them. You have to mix it up, change eye level, got to sequence really well. Obviously he’s a really talented bat-to-ball guy. He thinks through at-bats, how pitchers will attack him. I thought Hyun-Jin did a really good job, I really did. It just shows how locked in he really is.”

Ryu came off the injured list for this start after missing 12 days with a mild left groin strain. He conceded he was “cautious” in the early innings when he relied on his changeup. The fastball gradually gained velocity as the game progressed until he was removed with nine strikeouts after 5 2/3 innings.

“One good takeaway from this outing is, I came out of it healthy,” said Ryu.

Another takeaway, said Ryu, is that Yelich is really good.

“You have to give him a lot of credit, especially the first one, to be honest I felt I executed my pitch,” said Ryu, who is now 2-1. “He just got there and put it in the stands. The second one was more of a mistake. I didn’t throw my curve the first two times, and I switched things up and he got to the curve. You can’t deny he’s the hottest hitter at the moment, and he just punished me like that.”

Roberts defended Ryu. He gave the Dodgers a credible first start back, especially considering that, with closer Kenley Jansen down after throwing three consecutive games, Kenta Maeda was in the bullpen if the Dodgers needed a closer.

What Los Angeles really needed, though, were runs. The offense had only two singles, even though the Brewers gave the first start of the year to Chase Anderson, who appeared in deep water after a 34-pitch scoreless first inning. Anderson regrouped to go five innings, and the Dodgers finished the game without a runner reaching third base.

“[The home runs] definitely were not the difference in the game,” said Roberts. “You’ve still got to score runs. We didn’t tonight and that’s going to happen, too. You have to tip your hats to those guys.”