Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Dodgers kicked off their home opener with a 4-2 loss to the Diamondbacks to drop the team to .500 on the year. It would be one thing to again just lose the game, but no, the Dodgers had to blow another lead and make things all the worse.
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The good news? Kenta Maeda was excellent again, going six scoreless innings, striking out four, and only allowing five hits and a walk to keep his ERA at a nice 0.00. The bad news? Opposing starter Patrick Corbin was on his game and allowed just a single run in his six innings of work.
The D-Backs had two quality chances to score off Maeda. In the top of the second, a single and a double to start the inning put runners on second and third with nobody out, but Maeda wiggled out of trouble by getting an important strikeout and then inducing two grounders to end the threat. In the top of the sixth he benefited from the defense as the tying run was cut down at home on a flawless relay from Yasiel Puig to Justin Turner to A.J. Ellis.
On the flip side, the Dodgers scored their only run off Corbin in the bottom of the second on a suicide squeeze by Ellis.
Apart from that, they didn’t threaten Corbin much, but Puig did do this super awesome thing at least.
That’s basically where the happy times ended for the Dodgers, though. Pedro Baez entered in the seventh in relief of Maeda and gave up a game-tying homer to Nick Ahmed. Then in the eighth, Chris Hatcher came in and gave up the go-ahead homer to Paul Goldschmidt. Hatcher wouldn’t make it through the inning, but Louis Coleman got out of a bases loaded jam for him only to give up two runs of his own in the ninth to make it 4-1 in favor of the D-Backs.
The Dodgers threatened a bit in the eighth but failed to score, and then they managed to score a sympathy run from the D-Backs after a Corey Seager double, but that was about it and the game ended up 4-2.
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Notes
-Generally speaking, you’re as good as your record, but it’s interesting/horrifying to think that the Dodgers could be 8-0 this year if they could do things like hold five-run leads.
-Of course, a big reason why the Dodgers are not holding leads is this dumpster fire.
Dodgers starters have allowed 14 runs in 49 1/3 IP this season.
Dodgers relievers have allowed 16 runs in 21 2/3 IP
— Eric Stephen (@ericstephen) April 12, 2016
-As quality as Joe Davis has been as the new play-by-play man on the season so far (and I can envision him being the solution), the return of Vin Scully to our television sets was always a welcome sound.
Too bad about the game.
