LOS ANGELES —
All the ingredients were present early Saturday evening at Dodger Stadium to portend a dominant performance by Walker Buehler.
A strikeout pitcher, batters chasing pitches out of the zone, a home plate umpire giving an inch or so off the plate’s edges.
The Padres stopped chasing and even got a few hits. But Buehler kept throwing some ridiculous off-speed pitches and two kinds of fastballs — one that jumped as high as 98 mph and the other that cut around 94 mph. Gabe Morales kept awarding strikes that weren’t.
Buehler ended up with 15 strikeouts in a 4-1 Dodgers victory, only Manuel Margot’s pinch-hit home run with two outs in the eighth inning keeping the 25-year-old right-hander from his first shutout in his second complete game.