The Los Angeles Dodgers’ losing streak extended to three games on Friday with another disappointing loss against the San Francisco Giants. The seventh inning, in particular, was troublesome.
With a 4-2 lead, Tony Cingrani took the mound for his team-high 13th appearance of the season and immediately created traffic on the basepaths. He yielded four runs on three hits and exited the game with dead arm after recording only one out and allowing the Giants to even up the score.
Pedro Baez inherited a difficult situation with a pair of runners already in scoring position. Having thrown just one pitch to Joe Panik, Baez lost his footing and subsequently balked to enable the Giants to take the lead.
The right-hander then yielded an additional run after Panik drove in Kelby Tomlinson with a sacrifice fly. That was enough for the Giants to cement their fourth win of the season against the Dodgers.
After the game, Dave Roberts preached the importance of closing out games and believes the Dodgers are too talented of a team to struggle the way they have, via Bill Plunkett of the Southern California News Group:
“It’s disjointed,” Roberts said of his team’s performance over the season’s first four weeks. “I think, yeah, you can talk about how hard our guys are playing. But it definitely comes down to performance and execution, absolutely. And this is enough of a sample and we’re too good of a ballclub for things like that to happen.
“Tonight with the balk, that’s a freak thing, very unexpected. But – there’s a point where you’ve still got to find ways to get wins.”
Baez’s balk marked the second time this week a Dodgers pitcher was called for one. On Tuesday against the Miami Marlins, Cingrani issued a costly balk, which allowed Derek Dietrich to take second base and eventually score the tying run later in the inning.
Despite their recent slump, the Dodgers can return to .500 on Saturday with a pair of wins against the Giants, as part of a day-night doubleheader at AT&T Park.
