MINNEAPOLIS — Before the game on Tuesday, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts talked about some of the uneven spots in Tyler Glasnow’s first three starts this season.
“He’s obviously a really talented pitcher, really competing well,” Roberts said in the visitors’ dugout at Target Field. “I think that what we haven’t seen is, from start to finish, that he’s been synced up with his delivery.
“He’s a big guy (6-foot-8). There’s a lot of things going everywhere. So to kind of keep that under control is not easy, certainly. So I’m looking forward to, from pitch one to pitch 101, to have it synced up and it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
The Minnesota Twins had that syncing feeling Tuesday.
Glasnow overwhelmed a young Twins lineup, allowing just three hits while striking out 14 in seven scoreless innings as the Dodgers won, 6-3.
“That’s exactly what we were looking for,” Roberts said after the dominant performance. “We’ve seen Tyler over the years from the other side, and this is one of those things from pitch one to pitch 90 or 87, whatever it was tonight, he had complete control of the game.
“You look at the big leagues, he’s an ace for any team. He demonstrated that tonight, I thought.”
Glasnow struck out 10 of the first 15 batters he faced including six in a row at one point. The only hitter in the Twins’ lineup Glasnow did not strike out Tuesday was their No. 9 hitter, rookie outfielder Austin Martin. Martin doubled off the glove of a diving James Outman in right-center field in the third inning for his first major-league hit – and the Twins’ only hit in the first five innings – then pulled a hard ground ball down the third-base line for another double in the sixth.
“I felt just a lot more balanced today,” Glasnow said of syncing up his mechanics. “I think just everything like my direction going towards home was more consistent than normal and I think everything was able to tunnel off of it. I think even the couple misfires were misfires in the zone, so (I was) just being able to throw more strikes and get ahead of guys.”
The 14 strikeouts tied Glasnow’s career-high – and he knew it.
“I always do. I’d lie if I said I didn’t. I had them tallied up, for sure,” he said of keeping a mental count of his Ks, something he has done since he was a kid.
“Yeah, it’s like subconscious at this point. I think you’re unaware of it. Sometimes I’ll be off a bit but for the most part I kinda know, yeah.”
Glasnow became the first Dodgers starter of the season to pitch into the seventh inning and he did it with ease, completing seven innings on just 88 pitches (65 for strikes). According to OptaStats, Glasnow is the first pitcher to strike out 14 or more batters while throwing fewer than 90 pitches since pitch counts started to be officially kept in 1988.
The Twins couldn’t touch Glasnow’s four-seam fastball. He threw 45 of them (averaging 96.2 mph). The Twins swung at 25 of them, missed 12, fouled off seven and put just six in play. They took another 12 for called strikes.
They didn’t fare much better against his slider, missing six of the 12 they swung at, or the curveball, missing three times for a whopping 21 swings-and-misses in all.
“I thought he was really good,” Dodgers catcher Will Smith said. “He was attacking the zone, getting ahead and putting guys away.
“You’re just making sure you’re mixing speeds, mixing locations, making sure you don’t let guys keyhole and get on him. So, yeah, I thought he did a really good job tonight. It was fun to catch.”
The Dodgers backed Glasnow with three-run home runs in back-to-back innings.
James Outman was 2 for 25 with 14 strikeouts in that stretch before hitting the go-ahead home run in the seventh inning of Monday’s win. He joked about doing the same cricket bat hitting drills as Shohei Ohtani, hoping to get the same results as the hot-hitting Ohtani.
It might be working. Outman singled in his first at-bat Tuesday then launched a three-run home run 422 feet to straightaway center field in the fourth inning for the Dodgers’ first runs of the game.
Mookie Betts’ hot start has given way to Ohtani’s current 12-for-27 tear over his past six games, both obscuring the fact that Smith is hitting as well as either of them.
Smith has hits in 10 of his first 12 games, multiple hits in five of those. His 2-for-5 night against the Twins left his batting average at an even .400.
His second hit of the night Tuesday was the Dodgers’ second three-run home run, an opposite-field drive that doubled their lead in the fifth inning.
“I think he likes it that way, as far as being under the radar,” Roberts said. “He’s hitting fourth in a pretty dang good lineup so he’s not going unnoticed here. I think he’s an All-Star. A star player. He’s very consistent.
“I think the ‘Big 3’ certainly gets a lot of media attention. But that four hitter is pretty dang good too. He’s very consistent. He’s exactly what we need behind those three guys.”
The Twins were so relieved to see Glasnow leave the game after seven innings that they hit three home runs in the last two – one off of Alex Vesia in the eighth and back-to-back shots off Connor Brogdon in his Dodgers debut in the ninth.
