Andrew Heaney builds on his debut, striking out 11 in Dodgers’ sweep
by Rowan Kavner
Days before his Dodger debut, Andrew Heaney decided to make a change.
The two-seam breaking ball he worked on all spring felt terrible in his last simulated game before the start of the regular season. He told pitching coach Mark Prior he couldn’t take that pitch into a real game. Heaney worked on re-gripping and changing his thought process with the slider, which found new life in a bullpen session in Colorado. He figured if it could move the way it did at high altitude, it could do even more anywhere else.
“If you had to pick one point where the light went off, and just feeling good with the throw and making it his own and understanding the shape of his breaking ball, that was kind of the marker,” said manager Dave Roberts.
Through two starts as a Dodger — one cutting through the frigid air of Minnesota and another under the bright blue sky at his new home ballpark — Heaney hasn’t allowed an earned run. After turning heads with his breaking ball in 4 1/3 innings against the Twins, the left-hander one-upped that performance with six scoreless innings in his home debut Sunday to sweep the Reds in a 9–1 win.
“It’s been fun to watch — really quickly,” Roberts said. “I think he’s only going to get better.”
Better than a 0.00 ERA?
“I don’t know how the line score’s going to read going forward,” Roberts followed. “He’s going to give up a run at some point. But I think it’s going to get better because the more throws you make with the breaking ball, the more comfort you have with that — he’s getting really in sequence with the catcher, all that stuff — every start he makes he’s building more and more confidence.”
Heaney’s work kept the series finale scoreless through three innings, just in time for another sudden Dodger offensive barrage. The Dodgers got to Reds starter Tyler Mahle the second time through the lineup, erupting for seven runs in the fourth inning. It was their fourth time scoring at least five runs in an inning in their first nine games. The seven runs marked a new season high for an inning.
A trio of doubles plated the first five runs before Freddie Freeman hit a two-run single for one of his four hits on the day. Trea Turner scored during the inning but saw his career-high 27-game hitting streak come to an end Sunday.
“Every guy is pretty much a game-changer in this lineup,” Freeman said. “Hitting, you can feed off of that, and when you see good at-bats, you just want to keep it going. We were able to do that a lot in that one inning.”
The lengthy inning didn’t interrupt the rhythm of Heaney, who returned to put the Reds down in order in the fifth.
Heaney affirmed the filthiness of his breaking ball with his performance Sunday. Of the 22 Reds swings on the pitch, 14 came up empty. Opponents have whiffed 23 times on the 43 sliders he has thrown through his first two starts. He used the pitch to finish off eight of his 11 strikeouts against the Reds — his most in a game since striking out 14 on Aug. 20, 2019.
As the strikeouts build, so does his confidence in the pitch.
“It’s growing each time,” Heaney said. “First time throwing it in Minnesota, kind of hard to feel the ball, feel your hand, a little bit. Coming here, having a warm day, kind of feeling a little bit better with it, it felt good today.”
The pitch has played masterfully off his four-seam fastball. The two pitches alone got a combined 33 called strikes and whiffs Sunday afternoon.
“I think it’s something where I can keep guys off the heater with that and vice-versa, keep guys off the slider with the heater,” Heaney said. “Haven’t even really mixed in the changeup all that much, so I think that’s kind of the next step for me is to get a little bit more into a three-pitch mix. But I think the two play off each other really well.”
Heaney needed only 89 pitches to get through his six scoreless innings. The only hit he allowed was a double to Kyle Farmer.
Considering how new the slider is, he said he’s making up for lost time in Spring Training by using it as often as he can. But there are still times he has to remind himself to trust the pitch to do what it should.
“I think when you throw a new pitch, sometimes you want to make it do something and you have this idea or this vision for it, and if it doesn’t necessarily play out or look to you the way that you feel, you start sort of trying to create something on the fly or make it happen in real time,” Heaney said. “Sometimes you can get in trouble with that as opposed to just letting it happen. Today, I was just a little bit more confident and just ripping it.”
The result was another extraordinary outing from a member of a Dodger rotation that now has a 1.71 ERA. Over the past week, Dodger starters have allowed two earned runs over 32 innings. As a result, the Dodgers have won six straight games, recording their second-ever four-game sweep of the Reds in the process.
“If it helps the team win, that’s what I’m here for,” Heaney said. “That’s a good feeling.”
