LOS ANGELES — Hyeseong Kim started in center field to take some of the burden off Tommy Edman’s tender ankle and wound up losing a baseball in the twilight. Jack Dreyer opened for Landon Knack in hopes of maximizing matchups against the opposing Arizona Diamondbacks, and yet the two surrendered seven runs within the first three innings.
Nothing, it seems, goes right for the Los Angeles Dodgers these days.
On Monday night, they were bad enough on defense and ineffective enough on the mound that their mighty offense could not make up the difference. They lost 9-5 at Dodger Stadium, suffering their first four-game home losing streak since May 2018.
“We haven’t given up, but you’re going to go through certain situations like this,” Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts said. “It’s just tough. We got to find a way to get back healthy, get our guys back out there. But we’re battling with what we’ve got.”
Three critical members of the Dodgers’ rotation are currently on the injured list; Blake Snell, Tony Gonsolin and Roki Sasaki are all nursing shoulder injuries with uncertain timelines. Four high-leverage relievers — Kirby Yates, Blake Treinen, Evan Phillips and Michael Kopech — have hit the shelf since the start of spring training. And in the wake of that, a Dodgers organization that has been lauded for its ability to absorb injuries, most recently by riding bullpen games to a championship, has been unable to overcome.
Forty-eight games in, the Dodgers (29-19) possess a 4.28 ERA, which ranks 22nd in the major leagues. Their rotation, hailed as one of the sport’s deepest collections of arms when the season began, holds baseball’s sixth-highest ERA at 4.51.
“It’s not the staff we thought we’d have this season,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But I feel that what we still do and have done in the past with injuries, we’re not doing. And I say that in the sense of getting ahead of hitters and keeping the ball in the ballpark.”
Dodgers pitchers rank sixth in home run rate and have started behind in the count on 117 batters this season, tied for ninth most in the majors.
Dodgers coaches have spent the past few days preaching the importance of getting ahead and thus commanding counts in hopes of fostering a more aggressive approach from their staff. Dreyer seemed to carry that mindset with him early, getting ahead on three of his first four hitters. But the fourth sent a fly ball to straightaway center field that Kim, a rookie second baseman making his first career Dodger Stadium start at the position, never saw. It landed for an RBI double, igniting a two-run first inning.
The D-backs added another run in the second, on an errant throw from third baseman Max Muncy, a wild pitch from Dreyer and a sacrifice fly from Geraldo Perdomo. Four more came in the third, when Knack, vying for a long-term spot in the rotation, surrendered two-run homers to Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Gabriel Moreno.
By that point, the Dodgers, coming off getting swept by the crosstown-rival Los Angeles Angels, faced a 7-0 deficit they could not overcome. Shohei Ohtani belted his major-league-leading 17th home run, Betts added two of his own, and the rest of the lineup rallied to make things interesting in the bottom of the ninth. But it wasn’t enough.
The Dodgers’ offense, which got Edman and Teoscar Hernandez back from injury in the past two days, is whole at this point. L.A.’s pitching staff is far from it.
The effects of that are being felt.
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