Riding a high after taking three of four games from the Arizona Diamondbacks and claiming sole possession of first place in the National League West, the Los Angeles Dodgers regressed despite facing the lowly New York Mets.
First, the Dodgers’ modest three-game winning streak was snapped with Monday’s loss. Then, Wednesday’s defeat meant dropping their first series since being swept by the St. Louis Cardinals from Aug. 20-22.
Los Angeles had won three consecutive series after seemingly bottoming out against the red-hot Cardinals. While Hyun-Jin Ryu was perfect through three innings on Wednesday, he was done in by soft contact and sloppy defense.
The Dodgers, generously, were only charged for one error in their 7-3 loss. Manager Dave Roberts nonetheless voiced his frustration over their play in the field, via Ken Gurnick of MLB.com:
“I didn’t think we played good defense behind Hyun-Jin and I thought the way he threw the baseball was better than the linescore,” said manager Dave Roberts. “When you’re facing a guy like Wheeler, you’ve got to play good baseball. We just didn’t give ourselves a chance today.
“There were plays we usually make, you could just look around the diamond. Whether it’s added pitches or a run that scores that shouldn’t or whatever. For us, at this point in time, we’ve got to play better baseball. This was one of those games where we just didn’t execute defensively.”
The first costly miscue came in the fourth inning when Yasmani Grandal dropped a perfect throw from Joc Pederson on what would have been an inning-ending double play. Instead, Michael Confort’s fly ball to shallow left field was a sacrifice fly.
It then led to another run as Austin Jackson followed with an RBI single. In the fifth inning, Alex Verdugo failed to make a sliding catch, resulting in an RBI base hit, and Kiké Hernandez had a blooper skip off his glove, bringing in another run.
Brian Dozier had a pop fly go off his glove in the seventh, another eluded Hernandez, and a run scored two batters later.
The Dodgers have committed the seventh-most errors this season but don’t give off the impression of being a subpar fielding team. Additionally, they hadn’t put forth a widespread game with such difficulty in the field in recent memory.
They’ll have an off day to rid themselves of the feeling before beginning a key three-game series at Coors Field, where errors could be the difference between limiting damage and being buried by a big inning.
