Steve Webb
CHAVEZ RAVINE, CA — It was late in my baseball watching life that I came to appreciate the value of the “shutdown inning”–the idea that when your offense has done a good thing, it’s incumbent upon the pitching staff to keep the opposing team off the board in the next inning and the failure to do so is a momentum killer. Well, the Dodgers had the polar opposite of a shutdown inning on Monday night against the New York Mets. After taking the lead on an epic Max Muncy homer in the bottom of the 6th, Alex Vesia and Phil Bickford allowed the Mets to bat around in the very next frame, scoring three runs along the way. That proved to be the difference in an 8-6 loss to New York in this opening game between potential playoff opponents.
It was a night that the offense started to find its stroke again, but every time the team got out to a lead the Mets came right back. It was a back and forth affair but in the end the New York pen was just better in this one.
First the good news. It seems like Freddie Freeman has rediscovered his stroke at the plate. After being mired in a week-long slump, Freeman came alive with the bat in this one, going 3-for-4 with two home runs and three RBI. With the two home runs from Freeman and the solo shot from Max Muncy, the Dodgers got a couple more runs from a very unexpected place. The new catcher, Austin Wynns, who the Dodgers basically got off eBay, banged a two-run double in his very first at bat in Dodger Blue. That should have been more than enough offense to win the ball game. It was not.
In addition to the nightmare of the 7th inning, Dustin May was not his usual sharp self in this game. He gave up five runs on eight hits, and forced the offense to keep coming up with more ways to score. And without Will Smith in the lineup, that proved to be a tall order. The Dodgers threatened in the bottom of the eighth inning, when they got a Freddie Freeman single and James Outman ground-rule double to put men at second and third with just one out. But that’s where the comebacks stalled. Max Muncy popped out and Miguel Vargas struck out to end the threat, and the Dodgers would never get that close again for the rest of the night.
This drops the Dodgers under .500, with memories of that 111-win super team fading fast. This marks the latest in the season that the team has been under .500 since the messy, lovely 2018 team, who was TEN games under .500 at one point before they rode a strong second half all the way to the World Series. Luckily for the Dodgers, the Padres are also slow out of the gate this year as well, so at least it’s still a horse race. Whether or not the team can stay in that race is indeed and open question at this point.
“It’s baseball. It’s gonna happen,” Muncy said after the game. “It is frustrating, but you’ve just got to go out there every single day and play that game and not worry about what’s been happening, what’s going to happen. Just got to worry about today, and as long as we do that, I feel confident about our team.”
“We’d love to be 17-0,” Freddie Freeman added. “We haven’t gotten off to the start we wanted. But what does talking about it do? We’ve got to go out there and start playing better and win games. That’s really all we can do. We can talk all we want. But we’ve got to come out here tomorrow and get a split going.”
Short Hops
- Phil Bickford balked home the tying run on his first pitch. Not great.
- Dodgers’ pen is a shambles right now.
- Alex Vesia is NOT a high leverage guy at the moment. He needs to get into situations where he can find himself again. If that means OKC, so be it.
- Shelby Miller is looking like the best pitcher we got out there right now.
- In addition to the RBI double, Austin Wynns threw out a guy trying to steal. Nice debut from a guy who hasn’t had a whole lot of reps at the big-league level. He’ll probably catch again in the Wednesday matinee.
- Will Smith is eyeing a Thursday return as he continues to recover from his concussion.
