It was approaching 10 p.m. and Hyun-Jin Ryu was still on the mound at Dodger Stadium on Tuesday, attempting to complete a game for the first time since his rookie season of 2013 when he arrived in Los Angeles from South Korea. His parents, wife and a group of friends were in attendance. Suga, a K-Pop star, was looking on in Ryu’s No. 99 jersey. They were among the few thousand people remaining who roared when Ryu got two strikes on Atlanta’s Freddie Freeman with a runner on second. They roared louder when Freeman flailed at a fastball up out of the zone for strike three, sealing the Dodgers’ 9-0 win over the Braves. Justin Turner fueled Ryu’s run support, slugging three home runs — two solo shots and a three-run blast — in a game for the first time in his career. The effort quadrupled Turner’s home runs this season — he entered the night with one in 146 plate appearances. He added an RBI single and finished with a career-high six runs batted in, hiking his season total from 11 to 17. Now that April’s over, Dodgers’ Justin Turner is hitting home runs again » Advertisement “I have felt better the last couple weeks,” Turner said. “I feel like I’ve been hitting some balls hard and tonight I finally got a couple up in the air.” Ryu recorded his third career complete game and second shutout with 93 pitches, a ruthless efficiency the Braves (18-18) could not derail. It was the Dodgers’ first complete game since Rich Hill’s performance in a 10-inning loss to Pittsburgh in August 2017, and the first shutout by a Dodgers pitcher not named Clayton Kershaw since Josh Beckett accomplished the feat in May 2014. Ryu maintained a perfect game until Tyler Flowers poked a single through the left side to lead off the sixth inning. He gave up three more hits and struck out six. His earned-run average dropped to 2.03. He hasn’t walked a batter at Dodger Stadium since Aug. 26 — a span of 63 innings and nine starts. He contributed a bloop single to top it off. Dodgers starting pitcher Hyun-Jin Ryu pitches against the Atlanta Braves in the first inning on Tuesday at Dodger Stadium. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) “Today’s actually my mom’s birthday,” Ryu said through an interpreter, “so I think I was able to provide a good gift.” The combination extended the Dodgers’ home winning streak to nine games. At 24-14, they’re 10 games over .500 for the first time. They weren’t 10 games over .500 last season until their 94th game on July 13. Sign up for our Dodgers newsletter » Tuesday’s pitching matchup was a duel between left-handers with two of the stingiest walk rates in baseball. Ryu entered tops in that department, having issued two walks en route to posting a 2.55 ERA in 35-1/3 innings. On the other side, Max Fried ranked tied for ninth, having walked seven batters in 38-1/3 innings, and none in his previous two starts, while recording a 2.11 ERA. Advertisement While Ryu was able to sustain his excellence, Fried, a Los Angeles native and Studio City Harvard-Westlake graduate, endured a forgettable debut at Dodger Stadium. The 25-year-old battled command trouble from the outset. First, he allowed a home run to the second batter he faced, Turner. After Cody Bellinger singled and Chris Taylor worked a two-out walk, Max Muncy knocked a two-run single to give Los Angeles a quick 3-0 lead. Fried tossed 31 pitches in that rough first inning. His 35th pitch was a 94-mph fastball that Alex Verdugo lined back at him to lead off the bottom of the second. The ball bounced off Fried’s hand and Verdugo sprinted for an infield single. Fried tested the hand with two pitches before he walked off the mound, ending his brief homecoming in disappointment and leaving the Braves bullpen to cover at least seven innings. X-rays on Fried’s hand were negative, the Braves announced. He was diagnosed with a bruise. Ryu, meanwhile, was dominant and got some help. Second baseman Muncy aided his effort in the fifth inning with a diving stop on Nick Markakis’ groundball in shallow right field. His throw reached a rumbling Ryu in stride as the pitcher stepped on first just ahead of Markakis for the second out. Advertisement Ryu emerged from the inning having thrown 54 pitches. He was perfect for two more before Flowers spoiled his pursuit of perfection. The baserunner was erased with a double play to end the inning, leaving Ryu with the minimum faced through six. The Dodgers’ defense assisted Ryu again in the seventh inning when Bellinger, who missed two games last weekend after separating his right shoulder, stumbled and tumbled to the ground on the shoulder making a catch for the third out. “Cody made a play,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said, “that I don’t think anyone else in baseball can make.” Advertisement While the effort unnerved Roberts for a moment, it also saved a run and kept the shutout intact. Ryu was at 71 pitches by then. A complete game was within reach and Ryu didn’t slow down. jorge.castillo@latimes.com Twitter: @jorgecastillo<doc-sep>Justin Turner clubbed three home runs in a game for the first time in his career in the Dodgers’ 9-0 win Tuesday over the Atlanta Braves. In related news, it isn’t April anymore. For reasons he says he cannot explain, Turner becomes a different hitter when the calendar flips to May. In 480 career plate appearances between March and April, Turner has hit just three of his 97 career home runs. He clubbed the third one on April 30 this season against the San Francisco Giants, in his 123rd plate appearance. On Tuesday, he quadrupled his home run total for the season, continuing the perplexing slugging pattern another year. “I don’t know what the deal is,” Turner said. “Andrew [Friedman], I think, told me a couple weeks ago that I only have two or three career homers in April so not sure what that’s about but definitely glad that month’s over.” On cue, the 34-year-old Turner is scorching at the plate. Over his last 10 games, the third baseman is batting .414 with the four home runs, eight runs batted in and a 1.211 on-base-plus-slugging percentage. He credits adjustments he’s made from constant tinkering in getting his timing down — a crucial component given Turner’s exaggerated leg kick — for the surge. Advertisement Disciplined routine key to Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw’s consistency » “I wish we had an answer so we could turn it a little sooner,” Roberts said when asked if he knew why Turner flips the switch in May. “But I think, with Justin, it’s still the quality of at-bat every time he steps into the batter’s box. Winning pitches, running counts, taking a walk, driving in a run when he needs to. He does that and now the three homers get him back on track.” Turner’s emergence and Chris Taylor’s recent strong play are encouraging for a club that was stifled at times against left-handed starting pitchers during the season’s first month. Before Tuesday, eight right-handed batters, including pitcher Walker Buehler, combined for 20 home runs. Enrique Hernandez’s six homers lead the group. Meanwhile, five Dodgers left-handed hitters have combined for 37 homers this season — topped by Cody Bellinger’s 14. With Tuesday’s win, the Dodgers climbed to 10 games over .500. A typical Turner turnaround makes them all the more dangerous. “I think everybody knows the kind of player Justin is and what he means to this team,” Dodgers infielder Max Muncy said. “What we’ve been able to do with him not at his best has been great and now that he’s going to be at his best, it seems like, it’s pretty exciting looking forward.”<doc-sep>After a three-game sweep of the Atlanta Braves, a lot of players could have been named the player of the series. There were a lot of great performances all around, but none more impressive than Justin Turner. For the series, Turner was 7-for-14, with four home runs and eight runs driven in. His biggest game came on Tuesday, when he hit three home runs and drove in six. He became the second third baseman in Dodgers history to hit three homers, joining Juan Uribe who did so in 2013. Speaking of Mic Drop... pic.twitter.com/QoVlwd3na2 — Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) May 8, 2019 Justin time for another. pic.twitter.com/lTdKfYziha — Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) May 8, 2019 Turner has really heated up as of late. He didn’t hit his first home run until April 30, and has already hit four since then. Since April 26, Turner has been one of the hottest hitters in baseball. He’s hitting .391 with a 1.189 OPS. With Turner heating up, it’s no surprise the Dodgers have been feeding off of him. Since his hot stretch began on April 26, the team has gone 8-3, including winning five of their last six games. It’s well-known that May is when Turner starts to heat up. The Dodgers were among one of the best teams in April with a struggling Turner. Now, with him heating up, it looks as if the Dodgers are about to potentially break away early on in this division.<doc-sep>The Los Angeles Dodgers entered Tuesday's game against the Atlanta Braves with the largest division lead in the National League, two games up on the Arizona Diamondbacks. A decisive win paired with a Diamondbacks loss means the Dodgers will now head into Wednesday's series finale with a three-game cushion. They have some familiar faces to thank for that. Third baseman and suspected man-wolf Justin Turner was the offensive star of the game. He homered three times (becoming the fourth player to do so this season) as part of a four-hit, six-RBI effort. Turner had entered the night with just one home run over his first 146 plate appearances, a power drought that left him with a .347 slugging percentage, the lowest among healthy Dodgers regulars. How much did Tuesday's game change things? Turner now has a .434 slugging percentage -- that's an 87-point increase … in one game. Yowza. While Turner's slugging went up, Hyun-Jin Ryu's ERA went down. The veteran southpaw threw his second career shutout, limiting the Braves to four hits and registering six strikeouts. He's now up to five quality starts in seven tries and has a 2.03 ERA on the season. Ryu actually recorded a Maddux (a complete-game shutout in fewer than 100 pitches), as he required only 93 pitches to go coast-to-coast in the 9-0 win. He generated nine whiffs, including three on his signature changeup. Nearly three-fourths of his pitches were strikes, a testament to how locked in he is mechanically. Ryu entered the night leading all starters with 30 or more innings in strikeout-to-walk ratio, at 19.5. No other starter was over the 10.00 threshold. After Tuesday's game, Ryu is now at 22.5. It's fair to say Ryu is in control -- and right now, when it comes to the West, so are the Dodgers.<doc-sep>
LOS ANGELES -- A couple of weeks back, perhaps as a way to ease whatever concerns were beginning to creep in, Los Angeles Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman informed his third baseman, Justin Turner, that he had only three career home runs through the first month of a baseball season, a stretch that by April's end had spanned 429 at-bats. Turner smiled at that memory late Tuesday night, after blasting three home runs in the Dodgers' 9-0 victory over the Atlanta Braves. "Not sure what that's about," he said, "but definitely glad that month's over." Turner, who didn't hit his first home run of the 2019 season until the final day of April, recorded the first three-homer game of his career and the team's first since Yasiel Puig last September, lifting the Dodgers on a night when Hyun-Jin Ryu required only 93 pitches to twirl a shutout. Turner turned on a chest-high, 94 mph fastball from Max Fried and hit it out to left-center field in the first, then crushed a down-the-middle, 88 mph fastball from Josh Tomlin and lifted it to straightaway center in the fifth. He came up one last time, with two on and two out in the bottom of the eighth, and hit another 88 mph fastball out to left-center, the three home runs totaling 1,209 feet and averaging 102 mph off the bat. "He's been one of the best hitters in the National League for four or five years," Dodgers right fielder Cody Bellinger said of Turner, who added a run-scoring single to give him a career-high six RBIs Tuesday night. "It was nice to see him barrel some balls up." Turner carried a .364 on-base percentage through April 25, but his batting average was only .250 and his slugging percentage was only .284. He was displaying sound pitch selection but was missing opportunities to do damage. So Turner began toying with his leg kick and the way his shoulders were positioned when his front foot hit the ground. "Just trying to find something that clicks, and I think I've found something right now," he said. Over his past 10 games, Turner has 17 hits in 41 at-bats, six of them for extra bases. His OPS has jumped from .649 to .825, which falls in line with the usual timing of his production. The 34-year-old tends to heat up as the calendar flips, his career OPS going from .730 in April to .774 in May to .892 in June. His manager, Dave Roberts, is well aware. "I wish we had an answer," Roberts said when asked for an explanation. "We would turn it a little bit sooner."