For 18 starts, Tony Gonsolin was nearly spotless, but it all ended Monday night.
In his first start since taking the loss in the All-Star Game last Tuesday, Gonsolin endured his first regular-season defeat, allowing four runs over six innings in a 4-1 loss to the Nationals. The loss brought Gonsolin’s season ledger to 11-1 with a 2.26 ERA.
Although the loss stings, Gonsolin’s streak still puts him in rarefied air amongst Dodgers starters. Not only is Gonsolin the sixth pitcher in Dodgers history to start 10-0 with a 1.54 ERA or better, but his 11-0 start is tied with Alex Wood for the best in franchise history.
Wood’s 2017 start was also one of the best in baseball history. Gonsolin became the seventh pitcher since 1961 to begin a season 10-0 with a sub-2.00 ERA while also being the fifth pitcher in AL/NL history to enter the All-Star break with a record of 11-0 (Stephen Strasburg was the last pitcher to do so in 2016, going 12-0).
Not bad for a guy who wasn’t secured a spot in the rotation coming out of Spring Training.
The biggest key for Gonsolin’s success this year has been the dominance of his fastball, which has looked like a different pitch compared to last year. While Gonsolin had excellent offspeed pitches last season (hitters hit less than .200 on all three of his offspeed pitches), hitters batted .298 off his fastball. That, coupled with a reliance on his offspeed pitches earlier in the count, also led to Gonsolin having a walk rate of 14.2, one of the worst in baseball.
This year, hitters are batting 46 points lower on his fastball (.252), which has allowed him to get ahead in counts, cut his walk rate in half (7.1) and use his offspeed pitches to put hitters away.
All of Washington's damage on Monday came in the fifth inning, when it batted around en route to scoring five runs. And while they tallied a crooked number, the Nationals didn’t make a ton of hard contact against Gonsolin. Outside of Yadiel Hernandez’s home run to lead off the inning, the other two run-producing hits in the fifth from César Hernández and Juan Soto had expected batting averages of .270 and .140, respectively.
While a loss in the All-Star Game doesn’t mean anything in the long run, it’s continued a string of bad luck for Gonsolin, who has allowed a pair of four-run innings to bookend his All-Star outing. Prior to July 13, Gonsolin hadn’t allowed more than two earned runs in any of his starts, let alone in an inning. He allowed three runs in his one inning of work in the Midsummer Classic.
Gonsolin’s not the first perfect Dodger to run into a bit of a dip after the break. In Wood’s aforementioned start to the 2017 season, the veteran hurler entered the Midsummer Classic with a 10-0 record, won his first start out of the break and then allowed nine runs against the Braves for his first loss of the year. He ended up finishing the year 16-3 and came in ninth in the NL Cy Young voting.