ATLANTA — Dustin May knew how key his sweeper would be this season.
“It’s going to be huge,” the Dodgers right-hander said earlier this spring. “Being able to land that is probably going to be my biggest thing for the whole year.”
Lately, however, he’s learning there’s a flip side to that coin, as well.
For as good as May’s frisbee-esque breaking ball looked, when he returned from a nearly two-year absence by giving up just two earned runs in his first three starts, the pitch has been more inconsistent in the three outings since, dragging May’s overall performance down with it.
In a 4-3 loss to the Atlanta Braves on Sunday at Truist Park, it was two bad sweepers — both to Braves slugger Austin Riley — that sank May on a night the Dodgers saw their seven-game winning streak snapped.
In the first inning, May had two strikes against Riley before throwing a sweeper up and over the plate. Riley launched it to left for a two-run homer.
In the third, May tried his sweeper again against Riley, throwing it over the outer edge of the plate in a one-and-one count. But Riley was on it once more, belting another two-run blast that gave the Braves an early 4-0 lead.
Outside of those pitches, May was mostly effective. He got through 5 ⅔ innings. He struck out six batters. He didn’t give up any other runs.
But for this new version of May — who, in search of better health after two major elbow surgeries, has dialed back on his fastball velocity and drastically dropped the arm angle of his already somewhat side-arm delivery — even a couple of misplaced mistakes can spell trouble.
The Dodgers (23-11) didn’t give May much support.
With Braves starter Bryce Elder painting the corners of the strike zone, their recently streaking offense went cold. Max Muncy supplied their lone early RBIs, plating one run on a fourth-inning double and another on a sixth-inning groundout.
Miguel Rojas came off the bench in the sixth inning as a pinch-hitter for ice-cold outfielder Michael Conforto — who struck out twice and is six for 73 going back to early April — and hit a home run off left-handed reliever Dylan Lee to cut the deficit to 4-3.
Teoscar Hernández hits a single in the third inning for the Dodgers against the Braves on Sunday.
But that was as close as the Dodgers would come against the Atlanta bullpen. In the eighth, they were twice robbed of hits by diving plays from the Braves’ defense. In the ninth, they stranded Hyeseong Kim at third after he stole second as a pinch-runner for Andy Pages and advanced to third on a dropped third strike.
Still, for a banged-up Dodgers rotation looking for someone else to step up alongside staff ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, May’s recent regression has been the bigger disappointment.
In his last three outings, the 27-year-old has allowed 14 runs in 16 innings.
And each time, an inability to consistently land his sweeper has served as a source of frustration.
Two weeks ago, when an overall lack of command led to May getting knocked around at Wrigley Field by the Chicago Cubs, he was asked how difficult it is to be successful when that pitch isn’t working.
“I think you can see how important it is,” he said that night.
May remained dissatisfied after giving up three runs to the Miami Marlins last Monday.
“I still wasn’t executing very well at all,” he said then. “I just got away with some stuff.”
On Sunday against the Braves, it was a similar story, May looking frustrated with himself as Riley took his two trots around the bases, bemoaning poorly executed sweepers again.
