The Los Angeles Dodgers played a rollercoaster of a game filled with comebacks, blown leads and a rain delay, but the ride stopped with an extra innings loss against the St. Louis Cardinals.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto made his first start at Dodger Stadium and was far and away better than he was in his previous start in Seoul, South Korea. Yamamoto started his night by striking out the side, and from there he stayed in cruise control.
The right-hander pitched four scoreless innings before the game was put into a rain delay, which lasted 35 minutes. It was the first rain delay at Dodger Stadium since April 7, 2015.
Yamamoto took the ball for the fifth inning when the game resumed, and closed out his appearance with another scoreless inning. Overall, he struck out five hitters while giving up no, just two hits and no walks in five innings.
Lance Lynn matched Yamamoto with four scoreless innings prior to the rain delay, despite giving up three straight singles to open the game and dealing with traffic throughout his night.
However, Matthew Liberatore took over following the delay and it provided the Dodgers offense with the spark they needed. Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani both worked a walk, and Freddie Freeman followed with an RBI single.
Will Smith then singled as well to give the Dodgers a 2-0 lead.
Daniel Hudson worked a scoreless sixth inning, but once Kelly entered in the seventh, things fell out of control for the Dodgers. Kelly walked Nolan Gorman and hit Nolan Arenado with a pitch, and that was followed by Matt Carpenter reaching on catcher’s interference to load the bases.
Iván Herrera hit a sacrifice fly to put the Cardinals on the board and Alec Burleson tied the game with a single. Another single, this time from Brandon Crawford, loaded the bases once again.
A balk from Kelly allowed the go-ahead run to score, and that was followed by a double from Brendan Donovan to put the Cardinals up 5-2.
Mookie Betts doubled in the Dodgers’ half of the inning, and he came around to score on a single from Will Smith, cutting the deficit to two runs.
In the ninth inning, Betts hit his fourth home run of the season to put the Dodgers within one run. With the long ball, Betts set his new career-high with home runs in four consecutive games.
Freeman then singled to put the tying run on base, and Smith singled to put him in scoring position. Max Muncy then followed with a single of his own to tie the game at five runs each.
The game went to extra innings and the Cardinals were able to score their ghost runner in the 10th. The Dodgers started their inning with back-to-back strikeouts before Gavin Lux hit an infield single to put runners at the corners.
Betts walked to load the bases for Ohtani, but unfortunately they were unable to capitalize as he popped up to end it, closing out the 6-5 loss.
Dodgers conclude series with Cardinals on Sunday
The Dodgers finish up their four-game series with the Cardinals on Sunday at 4:10 p.m. PST. Gavin Stone is set to make his first start of the season, facing off against Steven Matz.
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