Steve Webb
CLEVELAND, OH — To say things didn’t go well for the Dodgers in the bottom of the seventh inning is something of an understatement. To be honest, things went horribly. Clinging to a 3-2 lead, the Dodger pitchers coughed up five runs in the space of about five minutes, and turned a road win into a hard-to-swallow defeat. In the end, it was a 8-3 victory for Los Guardiáns and a bit of a bummer start to the road trip.
The Dodgers didn’t waste any time getting on the board against Noah Syndergaard, who started the season as part of the LA rotation. Syndergaard has pitched slightly better with his new team, but in the first inning, it looked like the same old Thor. Mookie Betts got a hit and immediately stole second base (sound familiar)? After Freddie Freeman whiffed, Will Smith took his old battery mate waaaaay deep to left field for a two-run blast. Nine pitches into the game, and it looked like it might be the makings of a romp.
Syndergaard gave up one more run in the second on a Freddie Freeman RBI single, but that was as much as he was willing to bend in this one. After that, he settled in and ended up with a “quality start” — six innings and only the three runs allowed.
However, Bobby Miller was pitching well for the Dodgers as well. He mowed through the Cleveland lineup the first time through the batting order, giving up only a single in the first three innings. He had a bit of a hiccup in the fourth inning, when a Oscar Gonzalez homer and a couple of base knocks plated a couple of runs, but he seemed to right the ship in the fifth and sixth, throwing two scoreless frames.
And if Miller had come out of the game after that inning, he would have hit the showers feeling pretty good about himself. However, for whatever reason, skipper Dave Roberts tried to milk three more outs out of his big righthander. And it, um, did not go well.
The seventh started out well enough. Miller retired Gabriel Arias for the first out of the inning. However, Will Brennan hit a single and Bo Naylor worked a walk to put runners at first and second with just the one out. That was enough for Roberts. The Dodger manager headed to the mound and flung up his left hand, indicating reliever Caleb Ferguson was the first man out of the Dodger pen.
Ferguson got a ground out from 9-Hole hitter Myles Straw for the second out, but that’s when things turned south on him and the Dodgers. Steven Kwan and Jose Ramirez hit back-to-back singles for the tying and go ahead run, and now with the Guardians’ lights-out bullpen waiting in the wings, things were starting to look very grim indeed.
Things went from grim to downright bleak the very next pitch. Former Dodger farmhand Cole Calhoun, who just joined the Tribe (can we still call them that?) earlier this month, absolutely demolished a Ferguson cutter and sent it deep into the Ohio night. 350 feet later, the Dodgers found themselves in a 3-7 hole, a hole from which they would never emerge. The Guardians would tack on a run of insurance in the eighth, but the game was essentially over once Calhoun’s homer finally landed in the crowd.
So that happened. Hopefully, Clayton Kershaw can get the Dodgers back on track when he takes on the Guardians in another 4:10 start on Wednesday night. Now is not the time to be losing to sub-.500 teams boys. Wash the dirt of this one off your sandals and get back at it on Wednesday.
