New York (AFP) – The Los Angeles Dodgers, sparked by Andy Pages’s three-run homer, launched their bid for a World Series three-peat with an 8-2 victory over Arizona on Thursday on a historic day of Major League Baseball season openers. Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the reigning World Series Most Valuable Player, pitched six strong innings, both runs he allowed coming on Geraldo Perdomo’s two-run homer in the fourth that staked the Diamondbacks to a 2-0 lead.
Diamondback starting pitcher Zac Gallen gave up a leadoff single to Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani but retired 12 of the next 13 batters he faced before the Dodgers offense heated up in the fifth inning. Max Muncy and Teoscar Hernandez led off the fifth with base hits and Pages followed with the first home run of the Dodgers’ three-peat bid into the left field seats. They chased Gallen later in the inning, adding another run on a single by Will Smith — who added a two-run homer in a four-run seventh inning.
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The evening at Dodger Stadium started with the Dodgers celebrating their 2025 title before opening their bid for a rare third straight title run. “There’s obviously going to be a lot of talk about it, but I think our guys are trying to just think about winning a game today,” manager Dave Roberts said. “It’s out there, but you’ve got to kind of block it out and focus.”
The season’s first full slate of games saw Pittsburgh’s Cy Young Award-winning pitcher Paul Skenes knocked out of the game just two-thirds of an inning into an 11-7 loss to the Mets in New York. Skenes boasted an earned-run average of 1.97 — the lowest for any Pirates starter since 1920 — last year but was blasted off the mound by the Mets in the shortest outing of his career. Brett Baty’s three-run triple powered a five-run first inning for the Mets. A Marcus Semien single scored Baty and Skenes was pulled.
MLB history was made in the third inning at the Mets’ Citi Field when the first successful Automated Ball-Strike challenge in a Major League game was made by Mets catcher Francisco Alvarez. Alvarez challenged a full-count fastball thrown by Freddy Peralta to Oneil Cruz and called a ball on the outside edge of the strike zone. The call was overturned by the new “robot umpire” system for strike three and the second out of the inning.
In Milwaukee, Brewers pitcher Jacob Misiorowski surrendered a leadoff homer to the visiting Chicago White Sox, then the 23-year-old right-hander struck out 11 batters over the first five innings to set a Brewers opening-day record for strikeouts. Misiorowski eclipsed the mark of eight set by Ben Sheets the day before Misiorowski was born in 2002. The Brewers bullpen added nine strikeouts, the total of 20 tying the MLB record for most team strikeouts in a nine-inning game.
Detroit’s Kevin McGonigle hit a two-run double down the right-field line on the first pitch he saw in his MLB career to help the Tigers win 8-2 at San Diego. McGonigle was only the second Tiger, after Billy Bean in 1987, and 25th MLB player ever with four hits in his MLB debut. Detroit’s Tarik Skubal, a 29-year-old left-hander chasing his third consecutive American League Cy Young Award, struck out six and allowed only three hits in six innings.
© 2024 AFP
