Dodgers Recap: More Sloppiness in Loss to Twins

CHAVEZ RAVINE — After a solid win on Monday night, it briefly looked like the Dodgers might be back on track. But Tuesday’s performance put that idea to rest in a hurry. A disastrous showing by the bullpen turned a 3–3 tie into a 10–7 loss, and left fans at Dodger Stadium shaking their heads. Simply put, this one was garbage.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave the Dodgers a decent, if unspectacular start. He allowed five hits and one earned run over five innings, striking out eight and walking just one. When he departed after 101 pitches, the game was tied 3–3—thanks to Andy Pages, who had the lone highlight of the night for L.A. with a majestic three-run homer in the fourth.

And then the bullpen came in. And oh boy.

Ben Casparius immediately loaded the bases in the sixth with a single and two walks, and then issued a bases-loaded walk to give Minnesota the lead. Alexis Díaz did damage control to keep it from getting worse, but it didn’t last.

In the seventh, Will Klein came on and walked three straight batters. Ugh. Edgardo Henriquez then gave up a squibber down the first base line—off the bat of Royce Lewis—that somehow scored three runs. The ball barely traveled eight feet but Henriquez fired a missile wide of first baseman Freddie Freeman into right field. It was a metaphor for the whole night.

Henriquez did settle in after that, but the damage was done. Jack Dreyer came on for the ninth and gave up back-to-back doubles to Carlos Correa and Ty France to make it 10–5. At that point, the outcome was a formality. When Shohei hit a two-run bomb in the ninth (his fourth in as many games), it was the dictionary definition of too little, too late.

Offensively, the Dodgers had few answers. Outside of Pages’ homer and a two-run single from Hyeseong Kim in the sixth, they failed to capitalize on what few chances they had. Michael Conforto grounded into two double plays. Will Smith reached base three times, but no one behind him could do anything with it.

Defensively, it wasn’t any better. Miguel Rojas committed a fielding error, and Henriquez’s three-run miscue on the nubber from Lewis may have been the ugliest play of the season.

The loss drops the Dodgers to 59–43, and they’ve now lost four of five coming out of the All-Star Break. The energy is low, the bullpen is a mess, and the offense is inconsistent at best.

They’ll try to salvage the series and save face on Wednesday afternoon, when Tyler Glasnow takes the mound in the finale. After Tuesday’s mess, a sharp outing from Glasnow and something resembling clean baseball would go a long way.

But for now, there’s no sugarcoating it: this one was hard to watch.

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