Welcome to second place: Tumbling Dodgers are swept by the Angels

Los Angeles Times

3 days ago

The result was historic. The way it happened was all too familiar.
Never before, since interleague play began in 1997, had the Dodgers been swept in a six-game season series against the Angels.
But plenty of times in recent weeks, had they suffered the kind of fate that befell them Wednesday.
Entering the eighth inning, the team was leading by one run. Without many trustworthy options in a recently scuffling bullpen, however, manager Dave Roberts had few cards to play from his deck.
First, he sent left-hander Justin Wrobleski out for a third inning of work. When he walked the first two batters, Roberts turned to right-hander Edgardo Henriquez, who had pitched multiple innings the night before.
You can probably guess what happened next.
Despite perfectly defending a sacrifice bunt to get the lead runner at third, the Dodgers again failed to escape a late-game threat. With one out, Jo Adell hit what looked like a possible double-play grounder — only for Henriquez to deflect the ball on an ill-advised fielding attempt and send it rolling away for an infield single.
Two batters later, Logan O'Hoppe roped a go-ahead, two-out base hit into center.
Another lead had been squandered by the bullpen. Another loss — the Dodgers' fourth straight, and 21st in their last 33 games — had been all but cemented.
With a 6-5 defeat, the Dodgers were swept for the second time this season by the Angels. They also fell out of first place in the National League West for the first time since April.
It was yet another day they could only shake their head.
Wednesday was supposed to be about Shohei Ohtani, who was making his first pitching start as a visitor at his old home ballpark at Angel Stadium.
It was also Ohtani's first full-length outing since returning from a second career Tommy John surgery earlier this year. But even the two-way star could only conjure so much magic.
After building up inning by inning since his return to pitching, Ohtani's leash was extended into the fifth for the first time this season — a target length the Dodgers don't plan on having him surpass at least until the playoffs.
'He's just such a valuable player to us offensively, as a pitcher,' Roberts said. 'So to push for an extra inning, or call it five extra innings in totality, it's just not worth it. There's just way too much downside.'
And by the time Ohtani took the mound for the first time, he'd already helped the Dodgers take an early lead, beginning the game with a scorching line-drive triple before Mookie Betts singled him home and Will Smith went deep to make a three-run first inning.
The two-way star gave up two runs in the second, one on a Taylor Ward home run, then another after Yoán Moncada doubled and came around to score on a sacrifice fly, but the Dodgers restored their three-run advantage with a two-run rally in the fourth; one that featured three walks (including one from Ohtani and a run-scoring free pass from Will Smith) and an RBI single from Betts (who extended his hitting streak to eight games, five of which have been multi-hit efforts).
Ohtani's first foray into the fifth inning didn't go smoothly. Logan O'Hoppe and Bryce Teodosio hit consecutive one-out singles. Zach Neto laced a two-run double into the left-field corner that kicked away from Alex Call. And with his pitch count up to a season-high of 80, Roberts went to get him before he could qualify for the win.
Reliever Anthony Banda escaped the inning without further damage. Ohtani's final line was 4 ⅔ innings, four runs, four hits and seven strikeouts (two of them against former Angels co-star Mike Trout). His season ERA is now 3.47. He has 32 strikeouts in 23 ⅔ innings.
And for a while, it appeared the score would remain that way — until yet another late-game collapse sent the Dodgers to another maddening setback.