The same cannot be said for the Dodgers bullpen, which has dispensed far more gasoline than flame retardant this season and was torched for six more runs in the final two innings of an ugly 8-4 loss to the Chicago White before a crowd of 44,442.
Clayton Kershaw navigated his way through six challenging innings, giving up two runs and six hits, striking out five, walking two and escaping three harrowing jams during his 97-pitch outing, and the 35-year-old left-hander was in line for a win when the Dodgers rallied for four runs in the sixth inning to take a 4-2 lead.
But right-hander Yency Almonte gave up a leadoff double to Eloy Jiménez and a tying, two-run homer to Jake Burger in the eighth inning and was replaced by left-hander Alex Vesia, who hit a batter, threw a wild pitch and gave up an RBI single to Clint Frazier that gave the White Sox a 5-4 lead.
Tayler Scott and Victor González then combined to give up three runs and four hits in the ninth, Chicago pulling away on Jiménez’s RBI single and Andrew Benintendi’s two-run single for an 8-4 lead.
By the time the smoke had cleared, a Dodgers bullpen that had a second-best 2.87 ERA last season had a 4.90 ERA, the second-worst mark in baseball, and manager Dave Roberts was fuming.
“Very deflating,” Roberts said. “Clayton pitched his ass off, he competed. He didn’t have a whole lot as far as stuff but gutted his way through six innings. We took a lead, and we gave it away. We can’t lose that game.”
(Alex Gallardo / Associated Press)
Almonte, who seemed to find his bearings after a rocky start to the season by giving up one earned run in nine innings of his previous nine games, breezed through the seventh inning, needing only 10 pitches to retire the side in order.
With the right-handed-hitting Jiménez and Burger due up in the eighth, Roberts tried to coax two more outs from Almonte.
“It wasn’t two innings, it was an up-down, two more batters,” Roberts said. “Considering what he did [in the seventh], it’s a no-brainer. It just didn’t work out.”
Jiménez smoked a double to the gap in right-center field, and Burger, who hit a solo homer off Kershaw in the second inning, turned on an up-and-in, 84-mph slider, driving a two-run shot high off the left-field foul pole for a 4-4 tie.
“Yeah, I missed a spot,” said Almonte, who has a 6.75 ERA. “It was a slider up and in. You don’t throw sliders up and in. I felt like I threw the ball really well in the seventh inning. Unfortunately, they tied the game up.”
Vesia replaced Almonte and hit Benintendi with a pitch. A wild pitch sent Benintendi to second. Vesia struck out Yasmani Grandal, but Frazier rolled an RBI single up the middle for a 5-4 lead.
Brusdar Graterol, one of the team’s top three relievers, replaced Vesia. Elvis Andrus grounded into a fielder’s choice and was thrown out attempting to steal second to end the inning.
Did Roberts consider using Graterol to start the eighth inning instead of Almonte?
“Yup, I did,” he said. “But you throw a handful of pitches [in the seventh] and then you’re gonna go out there and get two hitters. I don’t think that’s a big ask.”
The ninth inning was just as ugly, Scott walking a batter, giving up a double to Luis Robert Jr. and an RBI single to Jiménez. González replaced Scott with two outs and runners on second and third and gave up a two-run single to Benintendi.
Neither Scott nor González played prominent roles last season, but many of the relievers who did–Evan Phillips, Caleb Ferguson, Graterol, Almonte, Vesia–are taking their lumps this season.
“It’s very frustrating,” Roberts said. “It’s not workload. It’s not the wrong lanes or the right lanes. They need to be better. Period.”
Kershaw escaped a bases-loaded, two-out jam in the second by getting Tim Anderson to ground to third and a second-and-third, two-out jam in the fourth by making a nice play on Anderson’s dribbler in front of the mound, charging the ball, grabbing it with his bare hand and firing to first to end the inning.
The White Sox put two on with no outs in the sixth, but Kershaw struck out Grandal swinging at a 74-mph curve, Frazier looking at an 87-mph slider and got Andrus to ground out to preserve the 2-0 deficit.
The Dodgers rallied for four runs in the bottom of the sixth, a wild inning that began with singles by David Peralta, Chris Taylor and Jason Heyward and included a run-scoring throwing error by Chicago right fielder Clint Frazier, an RBI fielder’s-choice grounder by Austin Barnes and the ejection of White Sox manager Pedro Grifol.
Mookie Betts lined a two-run single to right field off former teammate Joe Kelly to give the Dodgers a 4-2 lead, and Freddie Freeman walked to load the bases with one out. But J.D. Martinez struck out, and Peralta grounded out, part of a frustrating offensive night in which the Dodgers went two for 13 with runners in scoring position.
The Dodgers put runners on first and third with no outs in the fifth, but Betts and Freeman both swung at first pitches from White Sox starter Mike Clevinger, Betts popping out to first and Freeman popping out to third.
Clevinger injured his arm on a pitch to Martinez and left the game–the right-hander was diagnosed with right-biceps soreness–but reliever Gregory Santos struck out Martinez with his first pitch to end the inning.
The Dodgers roughed up Santos and Aaron Bummer in the sixth but were unable to put a dent in the White Sox bullpen over the final three innings. The Dodgers bullpen then imploded in the eighth.
“I think you can look at it two ways,” Kershaw said of his team’s relief woes. “Losing is no fun, especially late in games. But we continue to fight and put ourselves in a position to win games. So I think the optimist has to say that it’ll turn and we’ll start winning these games. But, yeah, it’s definitely a challenge to lose late, no doubt.”