Bullpen sinks slumping Dodgers again in loss to Twins
The Dodgers know this isn't the bullpen they expected to have at the moment. They have been resigned to playing the long game, trying to weather key injuries and extended absences with a revolving door of minor-league call-ups.
But in a 10-7 loss to the Minnesota Twins on Tuesday night, even they couldn't have foreseen the shockingly sloppy pitching that doomed them late.
In the sixth and seventh innings at Dodger Stadium, the Twins scored six runs without hardly even needing to swing. Over the two innings, Minnesota managed only two hits. But on a night that one Dodger reliever after the next struggled to find the strike zone, a parade of walks kept them circling around the bases, turning what had been a tie score into one of the Dodgers' most dismal defeats of the season.
The nightmare started with Ben Casparius, who replaced Yoshinobu Yamamoto after a laborious five-inning, three-run (one earned) start.
Right away, Casparius' command looked off. He walked one batter on five pitches, then another after a Ty France double to load the bases. Up next came Royce Lewis, who took a first-pitch cutter inside before watching each of Casparius' next three throws sail well above the zone. It was a four-pitch walk that forced in a go-ahead run. And as Lewis trotted to first, Casparius grabbed at his right leg and called for a trainer.
That would be the end of his outing — the team later said he had a calf cramp — but only the start of the Dodgers' bullpen meltdown.
Read more: Dodgers put Tanner Scott on IL, but hopeful he returns this season
Alexis Diaz, the former All-Star Cincinnati Reds closer who was making his first appearance for the Dodgers since being acquired in a minor-league trade earlier this season, couldn't escape the jam he inherited unscathed. Harrison Bader drove in a run on a swinging bunt up the third base line. Christian Vázquez added another with an RBI single to left.
And though the Dodgers answered back with two runs in the bottom half of the inning, trimming the deficit to 6-5 on a two-run Hyeseong Kim single, the pitching staff made sure the momentum didn't last.
In the seventh, hard-throwing right-hander Will Klein took over, but succumbed to the same fate as Casparius. After striking out Willi Castro, he walked each of his next three batters on pitches that drifted progressively farther from the plate.
The final indignity belonged to Edgardo Henriquez, who marked his return to the majors with a comical bit of pitchers' fielding practice.
After starting Lewis, his first batter, with a wild cutter that sent catcher Will Smith sprawling behind the plate, Henriquez executed a better one on the outside corner to induce an excuse-me swing.
The only problem: The ball went trickling back toward Henriquez in front of the mound, where he first bobbled it, then made an ill-advised decision to try and compensate with a rocket of a throw to first base.
It missed — horrendously — zipping past Freddie Freeman and rolling all the way to the wall in right field while all three baserunners came around to score.
Most of the crowd groaned. Others, surely, couldn't help but quietly laugh in pitiful misery.
Read more: Hernández: 'Still a threat.' Why Shohei Ohtani needs to remain a two-player for Dodgers
In what is shaping up to be one of the Dodgers' worst single-month performances in years (they are now 6-11 in July, and have dropped four of five since the All-Star break), this was a new nadir.
Granted, the Dodgers (59-43) disappointed in myriad other ways Tuesday.
There was the three-run rally they gifted the Twins (49-52) in the second inning, when Miguel Rojas misplayed a grounder at third base and Yamamoto hung a two-strike splitter that Vázquez belted for a two-run double.
There were squandered opportunities from what remains an out-of-sync offense, which got an early three-run home run from Andy Pages and a garbage-time two-run home run from Shohei Ohtani (his fourth-straight game going deep), but also hit into three rally-killing double plays.
Still, nothing stood out more than the woeful relief pitching, where a unit currently without half a dozen important pieces (including, most recently, Tanner Scott, who went on the injured list pregame with what the Dodgers hope isn't a season-ending elbow injury) came unraveled trying to lean on unreliable replacements.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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