Ryu again proves too much for D-backs to handle

PHOENIX -- The D-backs didn't take batting practice Friday after an early morning arrival from San Francisco.

As it turned out, once the game started, they didn't do much hitting either.

Hyun-Jin Ryu dazzled on the mound for the Dodgers as they beat the D-backs, 6-0, at Chase Field.

"He's got good stuff," D-backs manager Kirk Gibson said of Ryu. "Tonight was a really good game against us. Just all things considered, he threw a great game and we had no answer for him tonight."

The loss snapped the D-backs' modest two-game winning streak, and it was their third loss in as many games to the Dodgers this year.

"It was one of those games where everything went our way," said Dodgers manager Don Mattingly. "They came off a trip, we got in early. We scored early and added on runs. There was no true stress. You don't get very many of these."

Friday marked the second time this year that Ryu (2-1) had tied up Arizona hitters. In his first start of the year in Sydney, Australia, Ryu held the D-backs scoreless in five innings of work.

This time around, Ryu held the D-backs to just a pair of hits before departing after seven innings having thrown 99 pitches.

"Their guy, Ryu, pitched a heck of a game," Gibson said. "He was very, very good. He was better than the first time we saw him. First-pitch strikes, he was pouring them in there, in any count throwing any pitch, stayed out of the middle of the plate, so he made it tough for us to get anything going on him."

While the D-backs struggled at the plate, that was certainly not the case for Adrian Gonzalez.

The Dodgers first baseman went 3-for-4 with five RBIs and was a one-man wrecking crew when it came to Arizona starter Brandon McCarthy.

McCarthy (0-2) got the first two batters of the game out, but he then allowed a single to Hanley Ramirez before Gonzalez hit a home run on the first pitch he saw for a 2-0 Dodgers lead.

"The home run was just a mistake that I left out over for him," McCarthy said.

Then in the third with one out and two on, Gonzalez managed to ground a single back up the middle to score a pair of runs and double his team's lead.

McCarthy seemed to settle in after that, and he retired 11 straight batters.

The Dodgers, though, would blow things open in the eighth as Yasiel Puig and Ramirez led off the inning with doubles, with Ramirez's scoring Puig. And then fittingly it was Gonzalez who sent McCarthy to the showers with a single that scored Ramirez and gave the Dodgers a 6-0 lead.

It's been a frustrating season for McCarthy. The right-hander has had points in all three of his starts where he's thrown the ball well, but teams have capitalized when he hasn't.

"I feel like I've actually thrown not terribly and I don't know what the heck is going on," McCarthy said. "Whether it's a combination of bad luck or too many bad pitches, it's getting old."

Seeing their starting pitcher struggle has been a recurring theme for the D-backs this year and is one of the main reasons their record is just 4-9.

"I don't know if it's deflating; it makes it tough to come back," Gibson said of the early holes his starters have dug. "You want to work ahead -- everybody knows that. We haven't done a lot of that this year, so you've just got to buckle down and get some runs."

McCarthy said that he did not feel like he did anything differently during the stretch where he retired 11 straight. That leaves him baffled as to what is causing his struggles.

"That's a morally defeating game, especially to kind of have it figured out in the middle innings and get settled back down," McCarthy said. "It's just been a few pitches here and there that have gone wrong and they've happened to really hurt me."