SAN FRANCISCO — It’d’ve been extra irritating, had it not been so predictable.
The Dodgers beginning to flip a nook, solely to stumble to the sort of maddening late-game loss that has come to outline their season.
Getting into this weekend’s collection towards the San Francisco Giants, the group had gained 4 straight video games. It had began to stack higher offensive performances from its slumping lineup. It had begun to imagine that higher well being and improved pitching may spark a surge to hold it by the remainder of the marketing campaign.
Then, they got here out of an off day wanting flat at Oracle Park.
Then, actuality as soon as once more smacked them sq. within the face.
The Dodgers’ 5-1 loss to the Giants may need led to a well-recognized means, with Tanner Scott giving up a walk-off hit — this time, a grand slam to Patrick Bailey within the backside of the tenth — for the third time within the final eight days.
However on this evening, the embattled $72-million nearer was removed from the one particular person culpable for a slice of the blame.
The Dodgers (82-65) didn’t hit on a cool evening alongside the San Francisco Bay, with a seventh-inning house run from Michael Conforto accounting for everything of their scoring.
They didn’t again up one other gem from Yoshinobu Yamamoto, letting his newest dominant outing (seven innings, one run, one hit, 10 strikeouts) go to waste.
Principally, they squandered a chance to proceed the momentum they’d lastly constructed with this previous week’s long-awaited profitable streak. They let the sport come all the way down to Scott’s unreliable left arm, and reignited long-standing doubts about their capability to take care of any degree of constant play.
“When you score one run and you’re in a tight ball game, then there’s just no margin [for error],” supervisor Dave Roberts mentioned in one other somber postgame handle. “When you’re playing these close ball games, where any flare, any mistake costs you, that’s a tough quality of life too. So it’s not just those guys in the ‘pen.”
Certainly, the Dodgers’ loss was set in movement lengthy earlier than Scott threw an elevated fastball that Bailey lined to left for his walk-off slam.
It began with their lack of ability to hit Justin Verlander, who pitched seven innings of one-run ball with a heavy dose of curveballs and sliders. It escalated once they got here up empty in a string of scoring alternatives, going 0 for five with runners in scoring place. It’s an issue they’ve tried to deal with in latest days, together with with reps of simulated situational at-bats in batting follow.
Dodgers beginning pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto delivers within the second inning Friday.
(Ezra Shaw / Getty Photos)
Little by little, the turning factors started to snowball. And finally, all of it led to an avalanche of orange Giants jerseys celebrating at house plate.
“We had opportunities to get a hit, to drive some runs in,” Roberts mentioned. “We had some chances late to put up a crooked number. We just couldn’t come through.”
Within the first and third innings, the Dodgers couldn’t capitalize upon one-out walks. Within the fourth, they’d two on with no outs, and but nonetheless got here up empty.
Yamamoto, recent off his close to no-hitter in Baltimore final week, made certain they stayed in it. He gave up one run within the first inning on a Willy Adames double, which plated Rafael Devers from first base after Andy Pages bobbled the ball for an error. However after that, he retired the ultimate 20 batters he confronted, decreasing his ERA to 2.66.
Conforto, in the meantime, tied the rating within the seventh, hitting solely his eleventh house run of the season to straightaway heart.
From there, nevertheless, the horrors of the Dodgers’ horrendous play over the second half of the season shortly returned. They have been handed a winnable sport, and located a option to give it away.
They left one other runner stranded within the eighth, after Max Muncy was hit by a pitch in the best forearm that ultimately pressured him to exit the sport (however isn’t anticipated to maintain him out going ahead, after postgame X-rays got here again damaging).
They caught a break within the backside of the ninth, when Giants pinch-runner Grant McCray was thrown out at house plate by Pages on an aggressive ship on a shallow fly ball to heart. However then they gave it proper again within the prime half of the tenth, when catcher Ben Rortvedt (as soon as once more filling in for Will Smith, who continues to nurse a bone bruise on his proper hand) made his personal out on the bases making an attempt to advance as the automated runner from second to 3rd base.
All of it set the stage for the underside of the tenth, when Scott was thrust into the sort of state of affairs that has haunted him repeatedly of late.
Matt Chapman led the inning off with a floor ball towards Blake Treinen, shifting the profitable run over to 3rd base with left-handed hitter Jung Hoo Lee due up subsequent. At that time, rookie southpaw Jack Dreyer had already pitched within the eighth and ninth inning. Fellow lefty Alex Vesia was down after making back-to-back appearances in his return from the injured record earlier this week.
Thus, Roberts got here to the mound, and summoned Scott into the sport.
“He had three days off [before this],” Roberts mentioned. “I felt it was the time to run him out there.”
At first, the choice appeared to work. Scott pitched Lee rigorously to work a full-count. Then, he snapped off a slider that appeared to induce a putaway foul-tip.
However as Lee waved on the pitch, and residential plate umpire Invoice Miller initially signaled for strike three, third base umpire Chad Fairchild shortly overruled the decision, motioning the ball had as a substitute bounced off the bottom and into Rortvedt’s glove — despite the fact that replays confirmed that Rortvedt had secured it with out the ball hitting the dust.
“Obviously we looked at the replay, it didn’t hit the ground,” mentioned Roberts, who was left helpless within the dugout on what was a non-reviewable play.
“I thought I got it clean, it definitely didn’t bounce,” Rortvedt added. “But I think the way I caught, it might have been a trap.”
Both means, the at-bat continued. The subsequent pitch was a slider out of the zone, placing Lee on base as catastrophe started to stir.
The Dodgers elected to deliberately stroll the subsequent batter, right-handed hitting Casey Schmitt, to convey Bailey to the plate. Scott’s first pitch to him was a slider within the dust. The subsequent: A 96.5 mph fastball simply above the zone that Bailey timed up for a grand slam to finish the sport.
“Gave up a bad pitch to a hitter that can hit fastballs [and] it cost us again,” mentioned Scott, who has a 5.01 ERA in his debut Dodgers season with 9 blown saves, 4 shedding choices and 11 house runs allowed (tying his whole from the previous three years mixed).
“I’m tired of it happening,” he added.
Dodgers pitcher Tanner Scott watches after San Francisco’s Patrick Bailey hits a game-ending grand slam within the tenth inning of the Dodgers’ 5-1 loss Friday at Oracle Park.
(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Related Press)
Roberts tried to offer the nearer a vote of confidence afterward, saying “we’ve just got to continue to try to give him confidence and, when the time’s right, run him out there and expect good things to happen” — despite the fact that, the supervisor additionally acknowledged, it could be time to lastly use Scott in lower-leverage sequences of video games.
Rortvedt additionally took blame for the decisive pitch choice, despite the fact that he insisted the situation of the fastball was one which “no one’s supposed to hit.”
That didn’t appear to offer Scott a lot solace. He was so dumbfounded by his newest late-game implosion, he brazenly puzzled if he was merely tipping his pitches.
“They’re on everything, it sucks,” he mentioned. “I have no friggin’ clue right now. … I’m having the worst year of my life.”
The Dodgers, in fact, aren’t having a banner 12 months as a group, both. They won’t have ceded floor within the Nationwide League West standings on Friday, remaining 2½ video games up on the San Diego Padres after that membership’s personal gorgeous loss at house to the Colorado Rockies. However, the Dodgers did lose all of the momentum they’d carried into this rivalry collection; placing Scott able he has so typically struggled, because of their earlier lack of ability to place the sport away.
Sasaki’s subsequent steps
Roki Sasaki may rejoin the Dodgers’ big-league roster earlier than the top of the common season. However first, he’ll should cross yet another minor-league rehab check.
Roberts mentioned Sasaki, the rookie right-hander who lastly rediscovered his 100 mph fastball final week after lacking a lot of the season with a shoulder harm, will make yet another begin with triple-A Oklahoma Metropolis subsequent week after experiencing a calf situation in his begin final week.
If Sasaki comes by that outing OK, Roberts mentioned he hoped to see Sasaki again within the huge leagues, the place he hasn’t pitched since posting a 4.72 ERA in eight begins to start the season.
“I don’t know in what capacity,” Roberts mentioned of Sasaki’s position, which might possible be within the bullpen if he have been to make the postseason roster. “But I’m hopeful that we’ll see Roki here before season’s end. … From my understanding, Roki is in a good place to do whatever it is to help the team.”
