Wed. Oct 2nd, 2024
Occasional Digest - a story for you

In the first inning, he kicked at a soggy mound in immediate frustration.

In the third, he snapped at himself while shouting into his mitt.

In the fifth, he simply hung his head and walked somberly to the dugout.

By then, the damage had been more than inflicted.

In perhaps the worst start of his major league career, Julio Urías ran the full gamut of emotions Wednesday in the Dodgers’ 8-5 loss to the Baltimore Orioles.

In five innings, he gave up a career-high eight runs. Of his 93 pitches, few were executed with command or precision.

Early on, it led to anger, Urías giving up four runs in the bottom of the first to blow the Dodgers’ early two-run lead.

Later, he showed personal disgust, yielding a pair of two-out runs in the third.

After that, Urías still failed to find any answers, the Orioles (58-37) punctuating his day with a sacrifice fly in the fourth and solo home run in the fifth.

Urías career-worst ERA is now 5.02 on the season.

It wasn’t the performance the Dodgers (55-40) had been expecting from their opening day starter, not with Urías coming off the best two-game stretch of his inconsistent season.

He lacked feel for his slurve (it accounted for two extra-base hits and only one swing and miss) and life on his fastball (it averaged only 91.7 mph, more than a tick slower than his previous season norm).

He also looked visibly uncomfortable early, struggling to settle into a game that was delayed 40 minutes so the Camden Yards grounds crew could fix the infield (it hadn’t been covered during a rain storm the night before), then was hit by warm summer showers for most of his four-run first inning.

The Dodgers chipped away at their deficit a couple times. James Outman hit a solo home run in the fourth. Max Muncy launched a two-run blast in the fifth.

Each time, however, the Orioles responded against Urías, dragging his up-and-down season back into another descent.

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