Bad night from defense, bullpen sends Dodgers to another loss
WASHINGTON — The Dodgers weren’t playing flawless baseball even when their record was flawless.
That hasn’t changed. But the results have.
Neither the defense nor the bullpen was at its best on a cold Monday night at Nationals Park and the Washington Nationals beat the Dodgers, 6-4, handing the formerly unbeaten Dodgers their third loss in four games on this road trip.
“We need to clean some things up on all sides of the ball. We know we’re better than what we’ve been playing,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said. “Unfortunately, that’s baseball. You’re going to have some good streaks, some bad streaks. And it’s not necessarily a bad streak. We’ve still been playing okay. We’ve been scoring some runs. It’s just, we haven’t put it all together this road trip.”
They have shown their flaws, however, Poor baserunning and defense contributed to the two losses in Philadelphia. After a strong start, the bullpen has given up eight runs in 15 innings over the four games on this trip.
“Obviously, not the start to the road trip that we wanted, especially playing these couple games not as good as the Dodgers always play baseball,” said second baseman Miguel Rojas, who committed one of the Dodgers’ two errors Monday. “I think we’ve been committing a lot of mistakes on the bases. And defensively today, we gave them a lot of chances for them to score some runs, so we gotta clean that up.
“(Is it) surprising? Yes. Because we expect the best out of us every single day, and it’s supposed to be good every single day. But I mean, it happens. … And obviously, it’s not the way that we want to start this road trip, not losing these games the way that we’ve been losing it. I think defensively, we gotta be better, especially on the bases. We gotta pay attention to details a little bit more.”
Shohei Ohtani emerged from a 1-for-11 weekend in Philadelphia to go 3 for 4 with a single, a triple and a two-run home run, all off of Nationals starter MacKenzie Gore. But the rest of the Dodgers’ lineup had just two hits in the first six innings against Gore.
Dodgers starter Dustin May walked two in the first inning but ran into real trouble in the second when his defense complicated matters.
Another walk and a single put two runners on to start the inning. Jose Tena tried to bunt them over but dropped his attempt right in front of home plate. Dodgers catcher Will Smith got the force out at third.
Dylan Crews hit a hard ground ball to Mookie Betts’ left that went through him for an error. One run scored on the play. Another scored when Miguel Rojas flubbed James Wood’s ground ball to the second baseman’s right.
“I just missed it. Error,” Rojas said of his miscue.
Ohtani’s two-run home run tied the score, but the Nationals regained the lead in the third inning.
Luis Garcia Jr. led off with a single and stole second – one of three stolen bases the Nationals had in the game. Nathaniel Lowe drove him in with an RBI single two batters later.
May retired the next 11 Nationals in order before leaving after six innings (matching Yoshinobu Yamamoto as the only Dodgers pitchers to pitch that deep into a game this season).
“Fourth, fifth and sixth inning I felt pretty settled. I felt I could throw a strike,” May said. “The first three innings I don’t think I could have been paid any more to throw a strike. Settled in fourth, fifth and sixth and felt strong from there.”
But the Nationals pulled away with a three-run seventh inning against the Dodgers’ bullpen.
Anthony Banda replaced May in the seventh and gave up hits to three of the four batters he faced, including a two-run home run to Wood. Matt Sauer came in and gave up an RBI double to Keibert Ruiz that.
Those extra runs proved decisive. The Dodgers scored twice in the eighth inning on RBI singles from Betts and Smith. But Nationals reliever Kyle Finnegan – pitching in a third consecutive game – stranded the tying runs on base in the ninth to record a five-out save.
After his three-hit start against Gore, Ohtani came up with runners on twice and had a chance to complete the second cycle of his career. But he took a called third strike in the eighth and drew a walk in the ninth.
“I still feel pretty good about the team,” Ohtani said of the 1-3 trip so far. “Even though we’re playing from behind, we’re able to at least give a pretty good fight. At home, I do feel like we were able to flip the score and play even better baseball.”