Dodgers stumped by Boston knuckleballer Steven Wright in loss to Red Sox, 9-0

It was a challenge for Josh Reddick to get to Dodger Stadium for his first home game with his new team on Friday after the right fielder was acquired with pitcher Rich Hill from Oakland last Monday.

What would normally be a 20-minute drive from Glendale to Chavez Ravine took an hour for Reddick, a self-described “Southern guy from Georgia who is not used to traffic at all.” Even with the stadium in sight, Reddick said, “It took four entrances and three wrong-way turns to get in here.”

Reddick looked just as lost at the plate against Boston Red Sox knuckleballer Steven Wright on Friday night, but his misery had plenty of company.

Wright’s tantalizingly slow pitches, which ranged from 63 to 77 mph, dipped and darted all over the strike zone and left the Dodgers baffled and bewildered.

Wright, from Moreno Valley, threw his first career shutout, holding the Dodgers to three hits, striking out nine and walking one in a 9-0 Red Sox victory.

“We couldn’t get any good swings against him all night,” Manager Dave Roberts said. “His knuckleball was really moving. He was changing speeds, and he was changing eye levels. The best thing you can do is turn the page and move on to tomorrow.”

There are so few knuckleball pitchers that it’s difficult to prepare for them. Roberts had third base coach Chris Woodward, “our in-house knuckleballer,” float a few pitches to hitters in the cage, but a facsimile of Wright, an All-Star this season, Woodward is not.

Wright’s pitches danced high, low, in and out, and some, like the one that struck out Yasmani Grandal in the second inning, dropped a good foot as they approached the plate.

The Dodgers, who remained two games behind San Francisco in the National League West, tried swinging hard. That didn’t work. They swung soft. Nothing. Joc Pederson let a pitch hit him in the knee in the eighth, but umpire Jim Wolf did not award him first base, ruling Pederson made no attempt to get out of the way. After Justin Turner’s one-out double to right in the first, Wright (13-5) retired 19 of 20 batters. Of his 119 pitches, 78 were strikes.

Reddick was the only Dodger to have faced Wright before, with four hits in six previous at-bats. He flied to center in the first, struck out swinging on a 66-mph pitch in the fourth and looking at a 72-mph floater in the seventh, and popped to short to end the game.

“Everyone came in saying his pitches were doing all kinds of things out there,” Dodgers starter Scott Kazmir said of Wright. “I can only imagine what it was like to hit.”

Boston catcher Sandy Leon drove in four runs, and the Red Sox blew the game open with a five-run, five-hit, one-error eighth off relievers Jesse Chavez and J.P. Howell.

Kazmir breezed through a scoreless, 12-pitch first, no small feat for a guy who yielded an 8.14 earned-run average and .917 on-base-plus-slugging percentage in the opening inning of his first 21 starts. The left-hander also subdued nemesis Dustin Pedroia, the Red Sox second baseman who entered with a career .519 average (22 for 43) and two homers against Kazmir. Pedroia grounded into a double play in the first inning and grounded out in the third before departing in the fourth because of a left-shin contusion suffered when he fouled a pitch off his front leg in his second at-bat.

But Kazmir gave up a sacrifice fly to Leon in the second, a solo homer to Mookie Betts in the third and a two-run homer to Leon in the fourth. The left-hander tried to sneak a low-and-inside cut fastball past Leon, and the catcher smoked the ball into the left-field seats for a 4-0 lead.

“The game plan to Leon was to stay out of that location,” Kazmir said, “and I just didn’t execute.”

Kazmir (9-5) allowed four runs and five hits in 51/3 innings, striking out two and walking four. He did not walk a batter in 182/3 innings of his previous three starts.

“I was erratic,” Kazmir said. “I tried to throw inside and I’d pull it way inside. l wasn’t effective outside. I got outs with my cutter in and changeup away, but as far as throwing consistent, quality pitches, it just wasn’t there.”

Follow Mike DiGiovanna on Twitter @MikeDiGiovanna