Steve Webb
MILWAUKEE, WI — These games are almost unfair. After a Sunday Night Baseball appearance on the West Coast, the Dodgers have to fly all the way to Wisconsin to play a night game less than 24 hours later in Wisconsin. Not cool, dude. So they can be forgiven for looking a bit listless on the opening night of the three-game set with the Brewers. Tony Gonsolin pitched well, but was the victim of some bad luck, and takes the loss in a 9-3 defeat at the hands of the Brew Crew.
It was a scoreless pitcher’s duel between the Cat Man and the Brewer’s Freddy Peralta for the first four innings on Monday, but things unraveled for Gonsolin in the fifth.
Brewers catcher William Contreras led off the frame with a ground ball between third baseman Michael Busch and shortstop Miguel Rojas. Busch crossed in front of Rojas, bobbled the chance and picked it up with his bare hand. His throw to first base sailed wide of Freddie Freeman up the foul line.
“It’s a play that he expects to make and could have been a different inning right there,” Roberts said of Busch, who professionally has 104 career innings at third. “But he’s working hard over there at third base, and I wanted to get him in there. Unfortunately, we just didn’t come up with that play right there.
“We’ve got to make plays,” Roberts added of his defense overall. “I think that if you’re just giving teams extra outs, at some point in time, it’s going to cost you — and it does, regardless, as far as pitches, who we use, extending innings. Today it cost us. Guys are working hard, but you still got to go out there and make plays.”
And so, with one free out to work with, the Brewers went to work on Gonsolin. Gonsolin was almost out of the inning on a near-miss double play, but had to face one additional hitter in the inning. Centerfielder Joey Wiemer. Wiemer smacked a three-run shot over the left field fence and the Brewers were off to the races.
Gonsolin finished with a 1-2-3 6th inning, but the damage had already been done. He exited the game giving up zero earned runs, but will have to wear the loss, mostly because of what came after him.
Phil Bickford didn’t exactly get shelled, but he wasn’t effective, either. He got saddled with four earned runs on just 0.1 IP, and was part of the disastrous six-run bottom of the 7th. It wasn’t pretty.
But the key takeaway was Gonsolin, who came within one bad play of pitching six shutout innings. The worm will turn soon enough. If we keep getting these kind of performances out of Gonsolin, there is a very high ceiling on the Dodgers’ chances this year.
“I thought it was his best outing yet,” manager Roberts said after the game. “Velocity, his secondary pitches, how he sequenced. Obviously left that pitch up to Wiemer. But that inning just kind of unfolded in a way that a couple balls had eyes.
“Tony threw the baseball well. First time he got through the sixth inning and I didn’t want to push him anymore. Unfortunately, we couldn’t keep those guys at bay tonight.”
“I felt like I was throwing a lot of strikes,” Gonsolin said. “I felt like I was able to manage the pitch count pretty well. Got deep into the game. Made one really bad pitch and it cost us the game.”
