Brewers pick on Dodgers rookie starter Justin Wrobleski
LOS ANGELES — Justin Wrobleski gave up two home runs in his major league debut, and the Dodgers had their seven-game winning streak against the Milwaukee Brewers snapped in a 9-2 loss on Sunday.
Wrobleski, an 11th round draft pick out of Oklahoma State in 2021, got an education on what doesn’t work in the majors when he left a slider over the plate for Christian Yelich in the fourth inning.
Yelich clobbered it 418 feet into the netting in deep center field to put the Brewers up 2-0. It was the sixth career homer at Dodger Stadium for the Thousand Oaks native.
Wrobleski (0-1) was caught out again in the fifth on another two-run shot. Eric Haase snuck a 95-mile-per-hour fastball just over the wall in right and doubled the deficit.
Those two pitches spoiled what was looking to be a promising start for Wrobleski, who ended up allowing five hits and two walks in five innings while striking out four. Wrobleski got Jackson Chourio to fly out on his first pitch, and he picked up his first strikeout off Willy Adames to start the second.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts admitted he didn’t know much about Wrobleski, a 6-foot-5, 215 pound left-hander from Austin, Texas. He was promoted from Triple-A Oklahoma City, where he made two starts after going 5-2 at Double-A Tulsa.
“The comp I got was he’s sort of Gavin Stone but throws with his left hand,” Roberts said before the game. “There’s a good competitor in there.”
Roberts expected Wrobleski would be overloaded with emotions to start the game and was hoping he would be able to settle in from there.
“After the first couple innings, there’s a lot of adrenaline that starts to wear off and then you start to see if they can hold their stuff and see where the command and the stuff plays, and then I’ll kind of make a judgment call,” Roberts said.
But the decision was made for him with those two homers.
Chris Taylor tried to get the Dodgers back into it with a thumping two-run shot of his own in the sixth. It marked his sixth extra-base hit in 128 at-bats this season.
Whatever momentum Taylor’s third homer might have generated was quickly erased when Ryan Yarbrough gave up a solo blast to Blake Perkins leading off the seventh.
The Brewers picked up two more runs off Yarbrough in the eighth and another two off Anthony Banda in the ninth.