Brandon McCarthy’s first impression as a Dodger wasn’t great.

Four batters into his April 8 start against the San Diego Padres, Justin Upton stood in with a runner on base. McCarthy was trying to go inside with a 94-mph sinker after setting up Upton on the outside corner, but the ball caught a lot of home plate. Upton turned on the pitch, launching it 371 feet to left field for a home run. Suddenly the Dodgers were trailing 2-0.

The Dodgers came back to win the game, and McCarthy made a comeback of his own.

In the fifth inning, Upton stood in with two outs and runners on first and second. The Padres were trailing 5-2, so another home run would tie the game. McCarthy tried setting up Upton on the outside corner again. He got ahead 1-2 then came back inside, this time catching even more of the plate.

It was a challenge pitch, 94 mph at the belt. Upton swung but couldn’t catch up. Strike three, inning over, crisis averted.

McCarthy threw another six pitches in the sixth inning, never with the same zip, and didn’t record an out before he was pulled.

“That’s something now with throwing more four-seamers, I just try to let it go,” he said after the game. “I don’t know if I went a little bit too hard. I don’t know if I did a little too much, but at that time, that was the out I needed to get.”

That mindset gets to the heart of the first impression McCarthy has made on his new teammates. Sure, he’s a gangly intellectual with a good working knowledge of analytics and a dry wit that plays well on Twitter. That’s been true for years.

McCarthy’s first three starts of 2015 have also revealed his fearlessness — a degree you might not expect from a 31-year-old pitcher who’s made nine separate trips to the disabled list in his career.

Upton is one of 25 strikeouts McCarthy has recorded this season, which was one behind teammate Clayton Kershaw for the major league lead when the week began. Not bad for a pitcher who’s never averaged more than a strikeout per inning in his career.

“There will be days where maybe I need to go get ‘em, days like today where I’ll take outs any way I can,” McCarthy said after hurling six shutout innings Sunday against the Colorado Rockies. “Last year in New York I started getting more strikeouts, a little bit more swing-and-miss. It’s something the more I can do, the better, but I’ll take five-pitch innings with no strikeouts all day long.”

When McCarthy signed a four-year, $48 million contract with the Dodgers in December, it was seen as a bit of a gamble. His 2014 season went well — 200 innings pitched, 175 strikeouts compared to just 33 walks — and it particularly improved after he was traded to the Yankees in July. It was also the first time he’d been healthy enough to make at least 30 starts in a season. From 2007 to 2013, various injuries limited him to an average of 18 starts a year.

Since McCarthy was the Dodgers’ biggest off-season splurge (at least until they signed Cuban infielder Hector Olivera, whose $62.5 million contract still is not official), it stood alone as a measuring stick for the Dodgers’ free-agent acumen. And it seemed risky.

So far, as a snap judgment, the McCarthy from New York seems to have carried over to Los Angeles.

The fearlessness might be what teammates and opposing hitters notice, but it’s a direct result of the extra velocity he gained last year. That, in turn, was a result of the muscle mass he added in the gym.

“What you recognize most is the way guys are swinging through the fastball, the way guys are reacting to it,” Dodgers catcher A.J. Ellis said. “Facing him in the past, you never really felt like that was a pitch you really had to have in the back of your mind as something he can do. He told me that (Yankees catcher) Brian McCann really brought that to his attention last year when he went to New York. He started to run with it.”

Said McCarthy: “it feels like something I can really let go of, which is something I never really had in the past.”

Only five qualified pitchers posted a higher ground-ball to fly-ball ratio last year than McCarthy. It’s possible the Dodgers are getting a different pitcher than even they counted on, one who can rely equally on the groundout or the strikeout to escape trouble.

“I always pictured him in my mind as someone methodical who pieces his way through a game,” Ellis said. “After seeing him in spring training and catching his last two starts, you see a guy who’s just coming at you like a freight train, going to keep pounding the strike zone.”

That comes with a consequence. The closer a pitch is to the middle of the plate, and the faster it’s thrown, the more potential it has to travel a really long way. Sure enough, only one pitcher had allowed more home runs than McCarthy at week’s end. Each time he’s allowed a home run, McCarthy blamed his location.

Sunday, he limited a powerful Rockies lineup to three singles and no runs in six innings. His day ended when the most powerful hitter of them all, shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, grounded into an inning-ending double play.

That’s a powerful last impression and a much better one than the first.

The real Brandon McCarthy of 2015 might lie somewhere in the middle which, at least, should be fun to watch.