Tigers 6, Dodgers 1: Maeda’s disastrous 6th inning, lack of offense leads to loss

The Dodgers had their six-game winning streak snapped this afternoon by the Tigers by a score of 6-1. One bad inning on the mound for the Dodgers and many good innings on the mound for the Tigers made sure of that.

Tevs.

——

Kenta Maeda was dominant and perfect through five innings, looking well on his way to perhaps the best start of his career as his pitch count was manageable. However, a disastrous sixth inning made sure that never happened.

Facing the 7-8-9 hitters in the lineup, Maeda allowed a single, double, and double to end his perfect game, no-hitter, and shutout with two runs crossing the plate. After getting two outs and bordering on getting out of the inning by limiting the damage, he then served up a two-run dinger to Justin Upton to basically blow the game open (relatively speaking) late.

On the afternoon, Maeda went six innings on 85 pitches, allowing the aforementioned four runs on five hits, no walks, and seven strikeouts. Sigh.

On the opposite side, Justin Verlander was dominant and perfect through four innings, but walked Yasiel Puig in the fifth to break that up. An inning later in the sixth, Curtis Granderson broke up his no-hit bid with a literal ringing dong off the right-field fair pole.

Unlike Maeda, Verlander didn’t have any other problems with the lineup, allowing just one other hit besides the homer and the walk while striking out nine through eight innings. Hard to win when the opposing starter does that.

Luis Avilan threw a scoreless frame with two strikeouts in relief of Maeda, but the Tigers got insurance runs off Tony Cingrani in the eighth. After a single and a walk to start, Cingrani surrendered a one-out “double” to right-center in which Puig and Enrique Hernandez didn’t communicate effectively. That plated two runs that wouldn’t have otherwise scored, as Cingrani got out of the inning without further damage.

Didn’t matter anyway as the offense certainly didn’t bring any magic today.

——

87-35 for 2017 and 36-21 away from Dodger Stadium. Everything is terrible. The Rockies are playing now but are temporarily 19.5 games back in the NL West. The Astros are also playing now and are temporarily 11.5 games back in the race for the best record in baseball.

The Dodgers will travel to Pittsburgh for a four-game series against the Pirates starting tomorrow at 1:05 PM HST/4:05 PM PST/7:05 PM EST. Alex Wood (2.30 ERA/2.70 FIP/3.06 DRA) will look to continue his excellent season against Gerrit Cole (4.04 ERA/4.30 FIP/3.70 DRA).