Although the Dodgers still have a lot of baseball yet to play in the 2022 MLB regular season (101 games to be exact), right-hander Tony Gonsolin remains the best pitcher in the game and is clearly the early frontrunner for the 2022 National League Cy Young Award.

All the Vacaville, CA native and Dodgers ninth-round draft pick in 2016 out of Saint Mary’s College of California in Moraga, CA has done in his (thus far) 12 starts is post an MLB-best 8-0 record with an MLB-best 1.42 ERA among qualified starters.

Taking it one step further, it would be a crime if the 6′-3″ / 205-pound hard-throwing right-hander is not the National League’s starting pitcher for the upcoming 2022 All-Star Game to be held on July 19, 2022, at Dodger Stadium.

On Tuesday night in the first of two ‘Freeway Series‘ games between the Dodgers and the American League Angels of Anaheim, Gonsolin allowed no runs and only one hit in his masterful 6.1 innings of work, during which he struck out six and walked only two.

“It feels good,” Gonsolin said, when informed that he was the first pitcher with eight wins this season. “I know I’ve struggled in years past to go deeper into games and even qualify for a win, so it feels good knowing that I’m getting deeper into games and giving us a chance to win.

“I made it a point in Spring Training to just throw strikes and see what happens; try to give whoever is hitting my best stuff and whatever happens, happens,” Gonsolin added.

What happened on Tuesday night against the team with arguably the two best players in the game today, (Angels future Hall of Famers Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani [who singled off Gonsolin]), was nothing short of outstanding, to which he credited his 94-MPH(-ish) fastball.

“Fastball was really good today,” Gonsolin told reporters after the game. “I kind of felt it in the bullpen pregame, I felt like it had some life today, was great. Splitter started coming around a little bit, executed it when I needed to. Slider came around a lot. Curveball was solid. But overall, fastball felt good.”

And what does Dodgers manager Dave Roberts think about having the best pitcher in the game on his staff?

“To do what he’s done for essentially three months is pretty remarkable for anyone,” Roberts said postgame. “To see it through this stretch, I don’t think even in ’20 he was this good for this stretch of time. But again, this is a new ballplayer that has gained a lot of confidence. We don’t know where this is going to lead us, but he’s doing a lot of good things for us.

“I just think he has real confidence,” Roberts added. “To have that, to develop that, it takes time and it takes consistent performance. Right now, this is as confident as he’s been in his own abilities and he’s scratching the surface on some really good things moving forward.”

Keep on scratching, Tony.

Play Ball!

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