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The desperation of a toasted Dodger Stadium made itself abundantly clear Sunday in the fourth inning of a sunburn against the New Yankees.
With mighty Yankee Aaron Judge huffing and puffing at the plate, a lone insistent chant emerged from a Dodger fan lurking in the shadows.
“Ko-be! Ko-be! Ko-be!”
Sorry. Nice try. But on this day, the Dodgers lacked all evidence of a Mamba Mentality.
Coming off two inspirational wins in this three-game weekend showdown against their American League twin, the Dodgers ate the broom.
A team that had finally seemed to figure out its pitching watched its ace fold.
Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto struggles with his splitter and fails to extend what had been an impressive string of performances against the Yankees.
A team whose offense had become balanced and deep could barely poke a soft-tossing journeyman utility starter whom they once cut.
And, yeah, a team that does everything right did bits of everything wrong, a wild throw scoring a run, a wild pitch scoring another run, and a foolish stolen base attempt costing yet another run.
In all, it resulted in a 7-3 Yankees victory that left the Dodgers facing another stark set of numbers.
Baseball’s most talented team is 12-10 against legitimate championship contenders.
Baseball’s richest team is 28-23 since starting the season 8-0.
And now one of baseball’s most injury-plagued teams must strap back in for a four-game series against a first-place New York Mets team that has won seven of eight. Followed by three games in hot St. Louis. Followed by three games in angry San Diego. Followed by three games against the reborn San Francisco Giants. Followed by four more games against damn San Diego.
Whew. Gulp. A little Mamba would be nice.
That the Dodgers are facing this impossibly tough stretch would have made it extra sweet to sweep the Yankees, particularly coming 24 hours after beating them 18-2, and less than 48 hours after roaring back to beat them 8-5.
Everyone thought this defending champion Dodger team of gargantuan expectations had finally and permanently arrived.
Not so fast.
“When these guys came into town, I think we ramped up our focus, our approach, just the intensity,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts before Sunday’s game. “And it’s fortunately showed.”
And then it disappeared again, which has sort of been the Dodgers issue all season, right?
“We’ve got our guy going tonight,” Roberts also said, referring to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a Cy Young candidate who had shut down the Yankees twice last season. “It’s going to be fun.”
And then it wasn’t.
Roberts refused to change his positive tune afterward, maintaining, “For us, the takeaway is, we won a series, and that was the goal coming into this weekend.”
Yeah, but still...
Yamamoto had his second-worst stinker as a Dodger, surpassed by only his fumble of the division series opener last season against the Padres.
He gave up a career-high seven hits along with four runs in just 3 ⅔ innings, and didn’t have much help.
The Yankees quickly put the Dodgers on the ropes with a messy first inning, scoring one and loading the bases on, among other jabs, two walks and a wild throw home from left fielder Andy Pages.
One inning later the Dodgers should have come back to take a 2-1 lead on Tommy Edman’s homer. But on the previous pitch, Pages, perhaps trying to make up for that lousy throw, was thrown out trying to steal third despite there being only one out.
One inning after that, Yamamoto went bust, walking Judge, giving up a two-run homer by Ben Rice, then yielding two singles to set up a run-scoring wild pitch.
It was all pretty scary stuff for a pitching staff working on such a precarious tightrope. There’s enough uncertainty in other places that the one arm they must be able to count on is the one attached to Yamamoto.
The four scheduled starters for the Mets series are Dustin May, Clayton Kershaw, Tony Gonsolin and Landon Knack. All have been both decent and struggling and the bottom line is, would you want to give the ball to any of them with your season on the line?
Every time the Dodgers slugger hits a home run, reporters track down who caught the souvenir. “We’re writing human-interest stories with Ohtani as a cover.”
Honestly, the Dodgers need Yamamoto to be great, transforming a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon into a chilly missed opportunity.
His bad day was all the Yankees needed when the Dodgers’ vaunted four-man top of the lineup — minus an injured Mookie Betts — went hitless in 16 at-bats. A day after their offense banged out 21 hits, the stars can’t even raise a scratch on starter Ryan Yarbrough? How does that happen?
The Dodgers should have known all about Yarbrough. They had him for parts of the last two seasons, long enough for him to receive a World Series ring but not long enough to keep them from essentially releasing him before trading him.
The offensive struggles, which doomed late homers by Max Muncy and Pages, were epitomized by two middle-inning face plants.
The Dodgers put two runners on in the fifth, but a Miguel Rojas line drive to center field was caught, only briefly summoning memories of when it wasn’t.
Then, the top of the order couldn’t get the ball out of the infield in the sixth inning, meekly disappearing on 13 pitches.
“It’s funky, it’s funky,” said Will Smith of his former teammate’s style, and he’s not talking about a cool funky.
There was some good news for the Dodgers on Sunday, Betts working out while wearing a shoe for the first time since fracturing his toe during a midnight bedroom stroll and, according to Roberts, handling the pain. This means he could be back soon and, even though he has lacked his usual offensive greatness this season, his return can’t come soon enough.
Betts met the media before the game to discuss it.
”Just going to the bathroom... whatever you picture, that’s exactly what happened,” he said. “I’m sure we all have fractured toes from stuff like this...Just clumsiness I guess.”
Two words, Mookie.
Night light.
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