Steve Webb
CHICAGO, IL — Don’t blame Mitch White for this one. The Dodgers’ emergency starter was brilliant on Tuesday night, matching one of the best pitchers in the American League pitch for pitch for five shutout innings. But then came the 6th, and while Chicago starter Michael Kopech stayed in the game and continued to mow down the Dodgers lineup, manager Dave Roberts got out the hook on White, pulling him after he’d thrown just 69 pitches.
And then things blew up on the Dodgers, thanks mostly to our old buddy AJ Pollock, whose two-run double sparked a four-run 6th inning outburst that buried the Dodgers. The final score was 4-0, and there were more than a few head-scratching decisions in this one.
Dodger bats can’t solve Kopech
Fair is fair, Michael Kopech is having an excellent year. So it was no surprise that the Dodgers would scuffle against him. But it was a matter of degree. The Dodgers struggled against Kopech a lot. Only Will Smith was able to get a hit off the Sox righty, and that was a harmless two-out single in the fourth inning. Other than that, a big fat nada. They had something of a threat going in the both the seventh and eighth innings, but two double plays put an end to each of them pretty quickly.
The big three of Betts, Freeman, and Turner went just 2-for-11 in this one, and there simply wasn’t enough production later in the lineup to get anything going. It was just a frustrating night, as the best offense is the game got shut out for the second time this season.
White looks good, but odd pen moves sink Dodgers
Before he was (prematurely) yanked, Mitch White was having one of the best starts of his young career. He only gave up two hits and no walks on Tuesday, striking out five along the way. His two biggest K’s came in the fifth inning, when he worked his way our of a bases-loaded, one-out jam with a pair of strikeouts to the 8 and 9 hitters in the Chicago order.
Then, rather than letting White take the mound for the sixth and face the top of the Chicago order for the third time, Dave Roberts lifted White in favor of Phil Bickford, who has been very inconsistent this year, and in fact, only got called up from a stint at OKC because Craig Kimbrel is out on paternity leave. This, after an off day when all the Dodgers pitchers were presumably rested. Huh.
Bickford gave up a leadoff infield single to Danny Mendick, but then got two straight flyouts to be on the cusp of ending the inning. However, Jose Abreu knocked a single into right field to put runners on the corners with two outs.
Price was, um, off…
That’s when the game-changing moment came. Rather than let Bickford try to work out of it against light-hitting Gavin Sheets, Roberts came out with the hook once again, and called on lefty David Price out of the pen. But Doc must have known that skipper Tony LaRussa had former Dodger AJ Pollock on his bench, a guy who murdered left-handers when he played in LA. Sure enough, as soon as Price came into the ball game, Sheets was lifted in favor of Pollock.
What happened next was as fast as it was depressing. First pitch from Price: Whack! A two-run double from Pollock. Second pitch: Smack! Another double, this time from Jake Burger, to score Pollock. Then after an intentional walk and a strike to Reese McGuire: Crack! A single to bring home the fourth run of the inning. Price threw four pitches, and in that time gave up four runs (two charged to Bickford) on three hits. Ugh.
Gonsolin takes the mound on Wednesday
So that was kind of depressing. And though Yency Almonte and Justin Bruihl pitched two good innings thereafter, the damage had been done in that short little sequence. And on this night there was no coming back. The loss means that the team has lost six of eight, and will return to the ballpark on Wednesday, looking to Tony Gonsolin to right the ship. He gets the ball for a 5:10 PDT start against our old jukin’ and jivin’ nemesis Johnny Cueto, whom the Dodgers saw so many times in a Giants uniform over the last ten years. Let’s see what the crafty lefty has left in the tank.
Cans of Corn…
- This slump has come out of nowhere, after that excellent 8-2 road trip. That’s baseball.
- Kopech’s ERA is now below 2.00, so it’s not like the Dodgers were shut out by a slouch.
- Freddie Freeman has one home run in his last 156 at-bats. That is not what we signed up for, was it?
- Feeling like this bullpen was playing a little out of its mind in the early part of the season, and now more and more players are reverting to who they really are.
- We definitely could use a bullpen piece at the trade deadline next month.
