San Diego Padres: Walker Buehler Looks to Be Very Much For Real

The San Diego Padres couldn’t figure out the Dodgers’ young righty yesterday and had their bats rendered mostly fruitless by him once again.

The San Diego Padres had better get used to this. Walker Buehler, the 23-year-old right-hander for the Los Angeles Dodgers, stifled the Friars for the second time this season after throwing seven gorgeous innings in a 6-1 win over San Diego yesterday.

In his first start against the Padres on May 4 in Mexico, the Lexington, Kentucky native threw six hitless innings on the way to a combined no-hitter for the Dodgers, striking out eight and walking three.

Yesterday was more of the same, even if he did allow four hits. In seven innings of work, Buehler toyed with the Padres’ hitters for most of the afternoon.

His strikeout of Cory Spangenberg in the seventh inning on a nasty, tight curveball had Spangy smirking and shaking his head in disbelief as he walked to the dugout. I think we all felt that way.

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Once Max Muncy put the game out of reach with his towering home run in the eighth, any hopes of taking two-of-three from the Dodgers quickly dissipated.

Only then did the jaw-dropping effectiveness of Buehler really hit me.

San Diego Padres had bigger plans for yesterday

After a jovial 7-5 win on Saturday night, the Padres were certainly looking to keep their bats hot against their divisional rivals.

Unfortunately, that just didn’t happen.  Walker Buehler had his hands firmly on the wheel for the duration of his outing yesterday.

He worked around a Jose Pirela double in the first, a Travis Jankowski double in the third, a single in the fourth (Pirela), and another double in the fifth (Freddy Galvis, who scored on Rafael Lopez‘ sacrifice fly. He pitched clean innings in the second, sixth, and seventh frames.

Seven starts into his true rookie season, Buehler has a 2.20 earned-run average, a 2.13 fielding independent pitching rating, a 1.113 WHIP, 10.7 strikeouts per nine innings and a 3.53 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

Next: Franchy to DL, Renfroe to be Activated

This young man is doing some amazing things for the Dodgers. Again, the Friars had better get some sort of gameplan in order before the next time they face Walker Buehler. He simply owns them right now.