Steve Webb
CHAVEZ RAVINE, CA — That had to have felt pretty good. After being essentially shown the door by the Dodgers during the off season, Cody Bellinger came into the weekend series with maybe a little something to prove to his old team and the fans of LA. There is still some ball left in his game. Capping off a pretty solid series, Bellinger completely crushed a Julio Urias pitch in the top of the 6th and sent it deep into the faithful in the right field pavilion. A familiar sight, only this time it but the Dodgers on the wrong end of a 3-2 loss to the Cubs.
Like in the previous two games of this weekend set, the Dodgers’ problem wasn’t necessarily the other guys’ offense. It was their own. Once again, the LA bats had a very quiet day at the park, scoring only a run on a Chris Taylor homer and another on a sun-aided hit off the bat of Mookie Betts. Other than that it was a lot of goose eggs on the scoreboard. Of course, it didn’t help matters much that the Dodgers got absolutely ROBBED on three called third strikes in the bottom of the 9th inning when they were trying to stage a comeback.
For a while, there wasn’t much scoring for either side. After Taylor’s homer in the third gave the Dodgers an early lead, the Cubbies were able to tie it up in the 5th off Dodger start Julio Urias, thanks to an unearned run precipitated by an error on a fairly routine Cody Bellinger ground ball to Miguel Vargas on the right side of the infield. Once again, it was Belli who was the center of attention. Reaching on the error, Belli stole second and then moved to third on an infield out. Finally, he scored the tying run when DH Luis Torrens hit a little nubber that Julio Urias just couldn’t make a play on, try as he might.
Other than the unearned run, it was a very good first five innings for the Dodgers’ star lefty. And though he struggled a bit in the 5th, it made sense that Dave Roberts would send him out for one more inning of work in the 6th, especially given what the bullpen has been doing of late. However, that would prove to be Urias’s undoing.
Urias was darn near out of the inning unscathed. He got two quick outs and quicky had the third hitter of the inning, Patrick Wisdom, in an 0-2 hole. One more strike and he could complete his after noon on a high note. After starting Wisdom on three straight fastballs, Urias switched to the cutter, and some might question the “wisdom” of that decision. The Cubs’ third baseman drove the ball into the stands in left field to give the Cubs’ their first lead of the afternoon.
Then, up to the plate came Cody Bellinger, already a part of a lot of action in this series. Urias started the former MVP off with a curveball, but then on the second pitch of the at-bat tried to jam him inside with a fastball. The ball hung out over the plate a little two much and Belli made his former teammate pay for his mistake. He put that swing left handed stroke on the ball and 422 feet and a long trot around the bases later, the Cubs were up 3-1.
For the series, Bellinger went 3-for-11 with one home run, three runs scored, two stolen bases and one RBI, not to mention a home run robbery on a ball off the bat of Jason Heyward. Think he had something to say to his former employer with that performance?
The Dodgers got another run back in the bottom of the 7th of this one, but that was as close as they would get. Thanks to some absolutely horrible work in the 9th by home plate umpire Sean Barber, the Dodgers went quietly in the late innings. All three outs in the 9th were called third strikes on balls that were out of the zone, sometimes a lot out of the zone. You hate it when the officials take the game out of the players hands like that. Robo Umps! Now!
So the Dodgers drop another one at home, losing the series to the Cubs. Their home record is now a less-than-impressive 5-4 and overall the team is at dead .500, 8-8. And here come the Mets and Steve Cohen’s checkbook.
“It’s [16] games in, that’s not fair for a comparison between this year and last year,” said Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman, summing up where the Dodgers’ were at at this point in the season. “I feel like we haven’t got going. When we pitch we don’t hit. When we hit we don’t pitch. It’s just been kind of all over the place the first two weeks. We’ve got six more months.”
Hopefully those six months will be better than that first two weeks.
Short hops
- Tough loss to hang on Julio. His line for the day: 5.2 IP, 8 H, 3 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 6 K.
- Freddie left a lot of guys on base in this one.
- Though he didn’t hit the ball all that hard, Mookie had a 3-for-4 day with an RBI. Hopefully, he can build on that.
- Austin Barnes got his first hit on Sunday, after an 0-for-16 start to the season.
- Barnes will be seeing a lot more action in the coming days, as it was announced on Sunday that Will Smith suffered a concussion up in San Francisco on a foul ball off his mask, and Will be in concussion protocols all this week.
- Former Oriole and Giant backstop Austin Wynns will be Smith’s replacement on the roster. Diego Cartaya wasn’t really an option. A little surprised that they didn’t call up Patrick Mazeika from OKC, but whatever. It’s a short-term fix. Wynns might get his first start on Wednesday in the day game against the Mets.
- Speaking of the Metropolitans, the New Yorkers will be coming into the Ravine for an important three-game set on Monday. This will be the first 2022 playoff team that they will face, so it will be a good early season measuring stick for both clubs.
- Game time on Monday night: 7:10. Dustin May vs. David Peterson. For those of you wondering, Scherzer is schedule for the Wednesday game against Noah Syndergaard.
