A.J. Pollock slugged his first home run with the Los Angeles Dodgers, but it came in a 7-5 loss to the Kansas City Royals. Having previously defeated by the Dodgers, 8-2, at Surprise Stadium, the Royals completed a Spring Training sweep.
Although Pollock spent his initial Cactus League games batting leadoff, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts recently dropped him to fifth, and had his center fielder batting cleanup on Friday night. Pollock’s home run gave the Dodgers a 2-0 lead with two outs in the bottom of the first.
That was his lone hit, though Pollock also drew walks in each of his two plate appearances that came on the night.
Joc Pederson joined the power display with a solo home run in the bottom of the second inning, giving him two hits this spring; both of which are homers. Hyun-Jin Ryu preserved the 3-0 lead by limiting the Royals to just one hit as he spun three shutout innings.
The scoreless outing was Ryu’s third in as many starts this year, and his second with at least two strikeouts. Should he remain on turn, Ryu is tracking to be available to start Opening Day if Clayton Kershaw is not in position to.
The Dodgers lost their lead in the fifth inning when Dennis Santana became his own worst enemy. Santana stranded a base hit in the fourth, but compounded consecutive singles with no outs in the fifth by uncorking a wild pitch, which brought in a run. He later surrendered a three-run home run to Whit Merrifield that tied the game.
Stetson Allie’s first walk of the spring came back to haunt him as he issued another free pass before giving way to Michael Boyle. The left-hander promptly surrendered a go-ahead RBI single, though Keibert Ruiz dropped the throw from Paulo Orlando, which was on time.
That was followed by a two-run double before getting the Dodgers out of the eighth inning. Ruiz’s misplay and extra-base hit wound up proving costly as the Dodgers pushed a run across on Ezequiel Carrera’s RBI single with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.
Ruiz later represented the winning, only to fly out to deep center field.
