LOS ANGELES – Hiding behind that 5.00 ERA Emmet Sheehan toted around for much of the season might have been a valuable postseason piece.
Sheehan allowed just one hit in 5⅓ scoreless innings Sunday afternoon as the Dodgers beat the San Francisco Giants 3-1 to complete a three-game sweep.
Sheehan retired 16 of the 18 batters he faced, allowing just one single and walking one while striking out nine.
“I’ve loved the version we’ve seen of Emmet the last three outings,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “He’s been fantastic.
“We’ve seen confidence. We’ve seen when you’re essentially fighting for your life to create an opportunity for yourself. That’s what I see. There’s urgency. I like the way that he’s trusting his stuff. He’s in a good spot physically, and you know the performance has been fantastic.”
The outing was Sheehan’s third consecutive outstanding performance this month as he has bounced between Triple-A and the majors. It cemented a spot in the Dodgers’ postseason bullpen after a rough season for the 26-year-old right-hander – an outcome that did not seem likely when he was demoted to Triple-A in early August.
“I don’t know that I proved anything to myself. It was just getting a couple things right and I think I’m in a much better spot now,” Sheehan said.
“My confidence stayed the same the whole time. I knew the coaches down there were going to help me and I was going to get right. I took that approach going into it. I wasn’t helping the team here so I needed that a little bit.”
Sheehan has been called up for two starts this month and pitched in ‘bulk’ following Jack Dreyer as an opener Sunday. Sheehan carried a 5.29 ERA into September after 20 starts for the Dodgers that landed him back in the minors.
In his three September outings, though, Sheehan has shown rediscovered fastball command after working on his delivery in Triple-A. He has allowed just one run in 17 innings, holding hitters to a .105 average (6 for 57) with 24 strikeouts and three walks. After giving up 20 home runs in those first 20 starts, he has allowed just one in his 17 September innings.
If his confidence didn’t need repair, his delivery and pitch mix needed some work.
Now two years removed from Tommy John surgery, Sheehan was thrown by not quite having recovered all of his fastball velocity this year. When he chased those extra miles per hour, it was counterproductive. He has become more comfortable at 94-95 mph now.
“I think it’s a few things,” he said Sunday. “Definitely … being more comfortable in my delivery, being out there staying free and easy with everything, not trying to do too much. Instead of saying, ‘I need 97 here.’ It’s more like ‘If I hit my spot, he’s not going to hit it.’”
They haven’t. Sheehan has gotten 50 swings-and-misses in his three outings this month, nearly half of them (24) on his reborn four-seam fastball. He also got six on his curveball Sunday.
“I think that’s something that Connor (McGuinness), Mark (Prior) and I and the coaches down in Triple-A have been working on is just expanding the front-to-back game with the fastball and the curveball,” Sheehan said. “I think some guys ended up throughout the season sitting mid-speed, slider-changeup, on me. Having that change of speeds the last couple has been very important.”
The Dodgers moved Sheehan to the bullpen for the postseason last October and saw him as a big weapon in that role. The results were mixed, however, in part because of some pitch tipping issues which Sheehan said have been addressed. He will be wiser this time around, he said.
“Definitely,” Sheehan said. “I think the routine of everything can be a little bit hard to adjust to right away. So having that experience helps a lot. Just getting back into that, I know what I need to do to get ready to go into the game.”
The Dodgers gave him a little bit of a test drive by using Dreyer as an ‘opener’ before him. The Giants scratched out one run in the first inning against Dreyer when he walked leadoff man Jonah Cox. Cox moved to second on a wild pickoff attempt by Dreyer, stole third and scored on Victor Bericoto’s RBI single. The Giants had just one more hit in the game.
“I think that obviously there’s a 97 that plays better, but 94-95 commanded still misses bats,” Roberts said of Sheehan who will rejoin Oklahoma City for the Triple-A playoffs this week before returning to the Dodgers for the postseason. “That’s one part of it. The other part of it is holding the velocity. And so, for me, the last three or four since he’s been back here, he’s held those 94s and 95s for the, call it, 85 pitches.”
The Giants’ run against Dreyer stood up as the only run of the day until Tommy Edman emerged from a 2-for-41 slump to hit a solo home run in the sixth inning.
The Dodgers broke the 1-1 tie in the seventh on singles by Max Muncy and Josue De Paula followed by an RBI double from Kike’ Hernandez.
They stranded De Paula and Hernandez in scoring position but singles by Teoscar Hernandez, Freddie Freeman and Muncy produced another run in the eighth inning.
Kris Bubic, Brock Stewart and Tanner Scott combined on 2⅔ innings of hitless relief to close out the combined two-hitters for the Dodgers’ 96th win. With the win, the Dodgers’ magic number to clinch a first-round bye over the Atlanta Braves (who clinched the National League East division title Sunday) dropped to three.