Andrew Friedman gave an extended reply Sunday morning when requested in regards to the Dodgers’ latest — and, by the texture of it, acquainted — pitching woes to date this yr, the membership’s president of baseball operations bemoaning one other wave of accidents that has left the pitching workers shorthanded.
However the gist of his reply was within the two phrases he uttered at the beginning of it.
“Not fun,” he stated.
Within the Dodgers’ 6-4 loss to the Angels later within the day, it turned even much less so.
As issues presently stand, Tony Gonsolin is successfully the No. 2 pitcher within the Dodgers’ rotation, thrust into such a distinguished position with Tyler Glasnow, Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki injured. However in a four-run, four-inning begin, Gonsolin was derailed by his personal bodily subject, battling a bloody hand in a three-run first inning that put the Dodgers behind the eight ball.
The Dodgers rallied, erasing what grew to a 4-0 deficit on Shohei Ohtani’s RBI single within the fifth and Will Smith’s tying three-run house run within the seventh. However then a banged-up bullpen gave the Angels the lead proper again, with Travis d’Arnaud going deep within the eighth towards Anthony Banda — himself compelled right into a high-leverage position currently, regardless of a disappointing begin to the yr, due to accidents to Blake Treinen, Evan Phillips and Kirby Yates (who turned the most recent pitcher to hit the injured checklist on Sunday with a hamstring pressure he suffered the night time earlier than).
Friedman argued the Dodgers’ damage issues this yr don’t evaluate to the dire straits they navigated en path to final yr’s World Sequence title. In contrast to then, the crew hasn’t suffered any season-ending losses. Within the huge image, they continue to be assured they’ll have sufficient depth to mount a title protection.
And but, the crew hasn’t found the key to raised well being. Their rotation issues are giving the bullpen an unsustainably grueling workload. And determining how one can higher shield the membership’s costly secure of arms is “by far the No. 1 thing that keeps me up at night,” Friedman stated.
“I mean, everything from my brain is about what we can do, like, how we can solve this,” Friedman added, the self-described “deep dive” the group took into pitching accidents this offseason having but to yield higher outcomes. “It’s like a game of Whack-a-Mole, and things keep popping up. … The definition of enough depth, I think is a fool’s errand. I don’t know what enough depth means. I think more is always better with pitching depth.”
However, with the crew now rating twenty first within the majors with a 4.22 crew ERA, what they’ve presently actually isn’t sufficient.
After Gonsolin gave up a leadoff house run to Zach Neto on a sunny afternoon at Dodger Stadium, trainers got here to the mound to examine on the right-hander. As they examined his throwing hand, the tv broadcast zoomed in on streaks of blood overlaying the bottom of his pants.
Whereas Gonsolin’s precise drawback wasn’t instantly clear, the right-hander’s wrestle to command the baseball shortly turned apparent. With one out, he walked Yoán Moncada, wanting visibly uncomfortable as he sprayed the ball huge of the zone. In a 2-and-0 rely to his subsequent batter, Taylor Ward, Gonsolin threw a fastball over the center of the plate. Ward crushed it for a two-run homer.
Gonsolin settled down from there, giving up only one extra run the remainder of the way in which. However his pitch rely by no means received again underneath management, requiring 97 complete throws to finish the fourth.
It was already the 14th time in 47 video games this season {that a} Dodgers starter didn’t work into the fifth.
All these brief begins have had a cascading impact on the bullpen. And pitchers similar to Banda have needed to compensate because of this.
Sunday’s outing marked Banda’s twenty first look this yr, changing into the fifth Dodgers reliever to succeed in that mark. Coming into the day, no different crew had greater than three.
After pitching a clear seventh inning, Banda returned for the eighth and was bitten once more by a standard drawback. In a 3-and-1 rely towards d’Arnaud, he threw a center-cut sinker that d’Arnaud crushed to left. It was Banda’s fifth house run yielded this yr, tying the whole he gave up in 48 appearances over all of final yr. And this time, the Dodgers couldn’t reply again, getting tripped up by pitching issues once more en path to the Angels’ first three-game Freeway Sequence sweep since 2010.
