Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
Not exactly the way a team should start a series. The Dodgers lost 9-0 in San Francisco on Friday night, but that wasn’t even the worst loss of the night.
Hyun-Jin Ryu gave up four runs on five hits in the first inning. He got Angel Pagan to ground out, gave up a double to a guy who will no doubt be a thorn in the Dodgers’ side Joe Panik, a double to Buster Posey, a BABIP single to Hunter Pence and a bunch of other terrible stuff.
On Pence’s single, a shortstop with even average range would have gloved the grounder. But this is Hanley Ramirez we’re talking about. He has the range of a turtle dragging a bucket of baseballs. After the ball got through the infield,Yasiel Puig exacerbated the situation by, foolishly, throwing the ball home, allowing Pence to advance to second base.
Ryu was lifted after the first inning because of shoulder irritation. That’s just fantastic. Any other part of the body being injured would be preferable to the shoulder. Let’s just hope (pray) it isn’t too serious (but I don’t have a good feeling about that). The Dodgers set up their rotation for this very series (as they did last time they came to ‘Frisco), but losing Ryu after one inning and 27 pitchers hurts. A lot.
Chris Perez relieved Ryu, and was predictably awful. He walked two, had zero command and somehow got out of it without allowing a run. Baseball sucks. Carlos Frias came in after, had a high-wire act of his own in the third inning, but was generally good, until he gave up a 2-run home run to Brandon Crawford.
The Dodgers’ best look at the game came in the fifth inning. Juan Uribe got on with an infield single, A.J. Ellis and Frias struck out, Puig singled and Turner walked after a 12-pitch plate appearance. Adrian Gonzalez came up with the bases loaded, got a 1-1 fastball over the middle of the plate and … flied out harmlessly to center field.
Matt Kemp had his 16-game hitting streak snapped. He grounded out to shortstop twice, as well as twice to third base.
With the loss, the Dodgers fall to 83-64 and lose a game on their NL West lead. It’s down to one game. Zack Greinke (14-8, 2.73 ERA) takes on Tim Hudson (9-10, 3.12) on Saturday. First pitch is scheduled for 6:05 p.m. I’m not going to call it a must-win, but it’d be awfully nice if they were able to take this game headed into Clayton Kershaw vs. Yusmeiro Petit on Sunday.
