DENVER — During batting practice before Saturday’s game, Blake Treinen was standing against the back wall of the visitors’ bullpen at Coors Field when he was hit in the head by a fly ball. The veteran reliever dropped to the ground, holding his head but later walked to the clubhouse, where he showed no concussion symptoms.
He got hit hard again on Sunday.
Treinen gave up four consecutive hits in the seventh inning, failed to retire a batter and coughed up a Dodger lead. Pitching for the first time in over a week, Edwin Diaz faced four batters in the eighth, didn’t retire any either and the Colorado Rockies pulled away far enough to withstand a ninth-inning rally by the Dodgers before handing them a 9-6 defeat.
The back-to-back losses this weekend at Coors Field are the Dodgers’ first consecutive defeats of the season.
“I think that they’re a better ball club and in this ballpark, a lot of things happen. So this ballpark is certainly a neutralizer,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of the surprising location for the team’s first losing streak. “The pitchers don’t have the same feel. Ball plays different, and so it’s still hard to still win a baseball game, a big-league baseball game and Coors Field is sort of at the top of the list.”
For once on his start day, Roki Sasaki did not emerge as the Dodgers’ main concern. Edwin Diaz sits at the top of that list.
Pitching for the first time since his blown save on April 10, Diaz again showed diminished velocity on his fastball. He averaged 95.4 mph on his eight fastballs, down from 95.8 mph in his previous outings (about 1.5 mph below his career average). That included one at 92.9 mph.
“With Edwin, he just didn’t have any command, and the velocity was down, and, obviously, not a save situation. There might have been some adrenaline — or lack thereof — that played into it,” Roberts said.
“Obviously, he hasn’t pitched in eight days, so I’m certain there’s some rust to that. Again, the non-save situation, but, you know, talking to him today, he wanted to pitch regardless. … Hopefully it’s one of those things that he just hadn’t pitched in a while.”
The Dodgers have already checked into the health of Diaz’s surgically-repaired knee and Roberts said he has to “trust the player” when he says he’s healthy. But Sunday’s results did nothing to put concerns to rest.
“Today was a tough evaluation. I mean, it really was,” Roberts said. “Because I know what it’s supposed to look like, and when it doesn’t look like that, it gets a little concerning, really. And so, I’ll have a conversation with him. I know our training staff, and pitching guys will, and make sure that there is nothing to it, because the radar gun has been consistent, and his velocity been consistent in that, and it wasn’t there today.
“I gotta know more.”
What the Dodgers know about Sasaki is that he is as changeable as the Colorado weather Sunday – a pleasant 70-degree afternoon, making Friday’s snow a memory. The young right-hander breezed through three scoreless innings on just 26 pitches.
Storm clouds gathered in the fourth, however, and Sasaki was gone in the fifth inning, failing to complete that inning for the third time in his four starts this season.
Sasaki gave up harmless singles in the second and third innings, facing just 10 batters through the first three innings, thanks to a double-play ball. But the Rockies were doing him favors, swinging early in counts and getting themselves out. Twenty-one of his first 26 pitches were fastballs, and the Rockies swung at 17 of them – never missing.
In the fourth, Sasaki started to run into trouble, giving up an RBI single to T.J. Rumfield and walking a batter to load the bases before escaping when Alex Freeland and Hyeseong Kim turned an inning-ending double play.
The Dodgers had built a 3-1 lead, but that disappeared into thin air when Sasaki gave up three consecutive hits to start the fifth inning. Kyle Karros clubbed a 3-and-1 fastball 448 feet into the left field seats. Jake McCarthy stretched a double, then scored the tying run on Edouard Julien’s single.
Sasaki got the next two batters but walked Tyler Freeman and his first career start at Coors Field ended there with the score tied.
The Dodgers’ weekly visits to Sasaki’s spot in the rotation this year have led to a 6.11 ERA. Of their six losses this season, three have come in games started by Sasaki.
“I was kind of satisfied with keeping the pitch count down,” Sasaki said through an interpreter. “But we got a lead, and I couldn’t hold it. If I’m able to go deeper, it’ll be a little bit better.”
Indeed. Because Sasaki couldn’t get through the fifth, Roberts felt it necessary to use Alex Vesia to get out of the inning. The Dodgers briefly reclaimed the lead in the sixth inning. With Vesia out, Roberts went to Treinen to face the two left-handed hitters at the top of the Rockies’ lefty-leaning lineup (Edouard Julien and Mickey Moniak), saving Tanner Scott for a later spot in the lefty-heavy lineup and trying to avoid using Jack Dreyer after he went two innings on Friday.
Treinen gave up a double to Julien and a two-run home run to Moniak, turning the lead over to the Rockies. Hunter Goodman followed with another double, and Tyler Freeman drove him in with a soft single to left before Roberts called on Dreyer.
“I don’t know. I went back and looked at some of the pitches. I didn’t think the locations were really that bad,” Treinen said. “It was just a matter of — I don’t know, maybe I just didn’t execute good enough. Obviously if you look at some of the swings. I’ve been really happy with how the year’s been going and I’m not really going to dwell on one game. Colorado isn’t an easy place to play.”
Diaz gave up three singles and walked a batter in the eighth without recording an out. The Rockies turned that into three more runs.
The Rockies needed that padding.
The Dodgers put runners at second and third in the eighth when Alex Freeland flew out to the warning track in center field to strand them. Shohei Ohtani led off the ninth with a double (his on-base streak now at 51 games) to start a two-run rally that died when Ryan Ward came up as the tying run and Rockies rightfielder Troy Johnston robbed him of a hit on a diving play to end the game.