Despite an excellent effort from Rich Hill, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ bullpen suffered one of its worst collective performances of the season on Wednesday and prevented the club from potentially completing a two-game sweep of the Tampa Bay Rays.
With the score all evened up at one apiece in the seventh inning, Dylan Floro was the first reliever summoned out of the bullpen by Dodgers manager Dave Roberts.
Statistically speaking, the right-hander entered the contest with some of the best numbers for any reliever in baseball through the first seven weeks of the regular season.
Floro, however, suffered what was his arguably his worst outing in a Dodgers uniform. He faced four batters without recording a single out, yielding three hits and four runs — the biggest blow being a three-run homer off the bat of Rays outfielder Avisail Garcia.
The blast chased Floro from the game and propelled the Rays to a comfortable 5-1 lead in the seventh inning.
Afterward, Floro acknowledged that every pitcher is prone to have a bad outing every once in a while and vowed to bounce back strong in his next appearance, via Bill Plunkett of the Southern California News Group:
“I know this is going to happen,” Floro said of the bad outing. “I’m just disappointed I let the team down. I come in these situations and they’re looking for me to put up a zero there.
“I know I’m not going to go out there and be absolutely perfect every time. This game is way too hard. And it’s not just a month long. It’s six, seven months long depending on how far we go. … I know my pitches are good. I just couldn’t execute a couple pitches, get them in the right spot.”
Prior to Wednesday’s finale against the Rays, Floro had allowed just one earned run in 20.1 innings pitched on the season — good for a minuscule 0.44 ERA.
After his shaky performance, the 28-year-old’s statistics have ballooned across the board. He is now 0-1 with a 2.21 ERA, 3.47 FIP and 0.93 WHIP in 20 games.
Floro wasn’t the only Dodgers reliever to struggle on Wednesday. The recently-activated Caleb Ferguson additionally endured a rocky outing, yielding three baserunners and a three-run home run to Rays outfielder Kevin Kiermaier in one inning of work.
