Dodgers lose third consecutive to Reds when Dave Roberts’ pitching strategy backfires in sixth inning
The echoes of greatness were everywhere at Dodger Stadium on Saturday. The Dodgers staged a reunion for the 1988 World Series championship team, a sobering reminder that more than 10,000 days have passed since their last parade.
The Dodgers also put on an alumni game, and the introductions generously included those too old to play. There might have been no moment more touching than when Sandy Koufax, 82, extended his left arm so that Don Newcombe, 91, could hold onto it as the two men walked slowly onto the field.
Koufax, Newcombe, Tommy Lasorda, Fernando Valenzuela, Orel Hershiser … the introductions went on, a flashback to the days when being a Dodger meant playing in the World Series, and winning it.
The Dodgers got back to the World Series last year, for the first time since 1988. They did not win it. Then this season started, and the flashback has been to the era when the team was best known as Dem Bums.
The alumni game was special. The varsity game was not. The Dodgers lost, again, on this night by a 5-3 score to the Cincinnati Reds.
They recently lost a series to the Miami Marlins, and another to the San Diego Padres. They have lost this series against the Reds. Those three teams are the only ones in the National League with a record worse than the Dodgers.
“We can’t get out of our own way,” pitcher Ross Stripling said.
The malaise was capped in the ninth inning, when Cody Bellinger ignored a take sign and bunted with a 3-and-0 count.
Dave Roberts, the Dodgers’ manager, said he was surprised by the play and would discuss it with Bellinger. Roberts said he could not explain what Bellinger might have been thinking.
“I don’t know,” Roberts said.
Bellinger said he saw the take sign but knew a fastball was coming. With the infield shift, he said, all he had to do was poke the bunt anywhere on the left side, and he would get a bunt single, and the Dodgers could bring the tying run to the plate. He bunted back to the pitcher.
“If you get it down, it’s a great play. If not, it’s a bad play,” he said. “If I could do it again, I wouldn’t.”
For the first five innings Saturday, the Dodgers paid homage to their championship forefathers from half a century ago: solid pitching, opportunistic hitting, even a couple of bunts.
Then the sixth inning happened. The bullpen blew up, again, and so did a strategic move.
Stripling, filling in as a starter with Clayton Kershaw and Hyun-Jin Ryu on the disabled list, had held the Reds to one run over five innings. The Dodgers led, 3-1, and Stripling was at 71 pitches, the most he had thrown in a game in two years.
In the bottom of the fifth, the Dodgers had two on and two out, with Stripling due up. If he were tiring, Roberts could have batted for him.
Roberts let Stripling bat. He struck out.
The right-handed Stripling then faced two left-handed batters in the top of the sixth – one struck out, one singled – before Roberts removed him. The Reds had a right-handed batter due up, and Stripling had made just eight pitches to those two left-handed batters.
Roberts said the decision would have been different had left-handed relievers Adam Liberatore (ankle) and Scott Alexander (used Friday) been available.
J.T. Chargois turned that 3-1 lead into a 5-3 deficit in a hurry, facing five batters and giving up four hits. The big hit was a three-run home run from Scott Schebler, whom the Dodgers dumped in a trade that netted them three players no longer in the organization.
But Chargois never would have faced Schebler had he been able to field what should have been an inning-ending double-play comebacker from the previous batter, Eugenio Suarez.
In the eighth inning, Yasmani Grandal was doubled off second base on a line drive, depriving Matt Kemp of a chance to bat with the tying runs on base. If the Dodgers lose Sunday, the Reds would sweep them in a four-game series for the first time since 1976.
“I wouldn’t say anyone is panicking,” Stripling said. “But we’re definitely sick of it.”
In the seventh inning, after he struck out, a frustrated Chris Taylor returned to the dugout and slammed his bat into the rack. Or, at least, he tried.
The bat hit the side of the rack and boomeranged back up, very nearly hitting Taylor in the face.
That kind of night. That kind of season.
Follow Bill Shaikin on Twitter @BillShaikin
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