PHOENIX -- When the Diamondbacks announced that right-hander Corbin Burnes was going to miss his start last Monday there could have been some concern about how he would look when he took the mound again Saturday against the Dodgers.
Those doubts, though, didn’t exist in the mind of Burnes.
Once an MRI showed there was no structural damage in the shoulder, it confirmed for Burnes what he already suspected -- he was just going through a dead-arm period that pitchers usually deal with during Spring Training.
But when it felt good while playing catch and then again during his bullpen session this week, Burnes knew he was good to go.
As it turned out, he was right.
The right-hander dominated the Dodgers, allowing just five hits and punching out five over seven scoreless innings, as Arizona avenged a heartbreaking loss from the night before with a 3-0 win at Chase Field.
“Corbin, the last couple starts his velocity’s been down I think a little bit,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But today he came out with his ‘A’ stuff and I think you just got to give credit to him tonight.”
The win helped the Diamondbacks flush away what was a disastrous loss Friday in which the Dodgers scored six runs in the ninth to win 14-11.
“It was a great bounce-back win,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said. “I was really proud of how the guys kind of cycled through what happened last night, as frustrating as it was. They came out here focused and ready to play, and it was all really set up by Corbin Burnes.”
Lovullo received from the team’s medical staff and pitching coaches a recommendation of how many pitches Burnes should be allowed to throw Saturday and it was somewhere between 85-95.
Burnes follows a very strict routine as part of his mental skills training and he has a good feel for his body and what it can handle. So when he told Lovullo he was ready to go for Saturday, the manager trusted him.
“He said he felt great and he was ready to go out there,” Lovullo said. “And what he told me was, ‘If the engine is running real smooth, just get out of my way.’”
Lovullo was more than happy to follow that advice as he watched Burnes was in command from the first pitch. In all, he let him throw 91 pitches.
Burnes used the extra time off he had from missing his start to refine his mechanics a bit. Though he had pitched OK so far this year after signing a six-year, $210 million free agent deal in the offseason, he hadn’t felt sharp, especially with his cutter.
“It's been a couple years since I’ve been able to kind of throw it like that,” Burnes said. “That's something that myself and [pitching coach Brian Kaplan] have been working on a lot the last month trying to figure out what is not making its cut. Tonight it was cutting. It’s just consistency, the break of it, the amount of cut, what the numbers are telling you, what the hitters are telling you. So we saw a couple things tonight that were positive signs that we really hadn’t seen in a couple of years.”
Said Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman, “He’s one of the best pitchers in the game for a reason. Cutter was 95-97 [mph], got good depth. Threw the curveball off of it. Changeup was working too. Just had everything going today.”