LOS ANGELES – The Dodgers took too long to wake up Saturday.
Held without a hit until the fifth inning and scoreless through eight, they rallied in the ninth inning but came up short in a 3-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles that snapped the Dodgers four-game winning streak.
The game was their fifth consecutive this week decided by one run.
“It wasn’t our night,” Miguel Rojas said. “We have to bounce back and come back tomorrow and get the series.”
Left-hander Trevor Rogers kept the Dodgers hitters off balance and confused for the first seven innings.
Andy Pages drew a walk in the first inning but was thrown out trying to steal second. The Dodgers’ next baserunner didn’t come until there were two outs in the fifth inning when Tommy Edman’s pop-up dropped for a single in shallow center field.
Rogers retired 12 in a row between the two baserunners, five on strikeouts. His four-seam fastball averaged a modest 94.5 mph but generated seven of his 13 swings-and-misses. Using a cutter and changeup to keep the Dodgers hitters off balance, Rogers generated lots of weak contact. Even the hardest-hit balls off Rogers were easy outs – a 101.8 mph ground out by Freddie Freeman, a 101.5 mph pop up by Shohei Ohtani and a 101.4 mph fly out by Freeman.
“For me, tonight, it just seemed like we got bullied tonight with the fastball,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “You’ve got to hit the fastball. And tonight — he has good fastball, he bores in on the right-handed hitters, lefties it’s a tough at-bat. But the righties, I think that he just really came after us with the fastball, and we just couldn’t get anything going.”
The closest the Dodgers came to scoring off Rogers came in the seventh inning after Mookie Betts drew a two-out walk (the Dodgers’ third and final baserunner against him). Rojas drove Colton Cowser to the wall in straightaway center field where Rojas’ 393-foot fly ball came down in Cowser’s glove.
“I don’t have that kind of power to center, to be honest with you,” Rojas said. “When I hit it, I look up and I see 101 (mph exit velocity), and I was just praying that the ball will fly. But you know how it is at night here, sometimes it’s really hard to get it out over there. I see balls hitting 105, 106, 108 and they don’t leave, so I was just hoping for the ball to go over the fence there and score two runs.”
Rogers came into the game with a 5.86 ERA for the season. His longest outing since he threw seven scoreless innings for the Orioles on Opening Day did a world of good for that number, dropping it to 5.30.
The Orioles’ offense got to Yamamoto early.
In his first start since chasing history in Chicago last weekend, Yamamoto gave up three runs in the first four innings. In his previous five starts – including last weekend against the White Sox when he took a perfect game into the eighth inning and a no-hitter into the ninth – he had a 1.01 ERA.
There was a lot more traffic Saturday. The Orioles had baserunners in four of the first five innings against Yamamoto.
“The issue was it took me a little time to get the feel for the splitter,” Yamamoto said through his interpreter. “And then in the meantime I was trying to grind it out with different options, with other pitches.”
Back-to-back singles to start the second inning set up a run-scoring forceout. Back-to-back singles opened the fourth inning as well. A walk loaded the bases and Blaze Alexander drove in two runs with a double off the glove of diving third baseman Tommy Edman.
“When I look back, I knew I was expecting his aggressiveness in his at-bat,” Yamamoto said. “Knowing that, I threw a curveball. It ended up in a bad spot. If I locate that pitch, probably I might have been able to get him on a ground ball.”
Yamamoto and the Dodgers’ bullpen did hold the Orioles to just two singles after that fourth inning, giving the offense time to get back in the game.
They didn’t show any signs of life until Ohtani (back in the lineup after missing Friday’s game for the birth of his second child) led off the ninth inning with a home run.
Mookie Betts’ ninth-inning homer Friday night sparked a comeback win. After Ohtani’s 413-foot drive, the Dodgers started to put together another late rally. They put the tying runs on base with one out when Freeman drew a walk and Betts beat out an infield single.
Alex Freeland flew out for the second out but Edman hit a line drive at right fielder Leody Taveras that should have ended the game.
But Taveras dropped the ball. One run scored on the play and Betts went to third, putting the tying run 90 feet away. But Kyle Tucker struck out, chasing a splitter in the dirt from Orioles reliever Yennier Cano to end the game.