Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Dodgers lost to the Nationals tonight, 8-1, basically because the Nationals can hit mistakes in the middle of the zone and the Dodgers can’t hit anything again. Hooray!
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Bud Norris was dominant at times in his start today, as evidenced by his eight strikeouts, and his one walk speaks to the fact that he was generally around the plate. But his fine command wasn’t there, and all the pitches he left over the heart of the plate were smoked, leading to six runs on seven hits, with three of those hits being homers.
And that was basically the game.
The offense amassed four hits and two walks off a mediocre version of Gio Gonzalez and other relievers, so really it didn’t matter what the pitchers did once the second run crossed the plate. Then again, I guess in retrospect, when Chris Taylor is batting second, Scott Van Slyke is batting fifth, and Charlie Culberson is in the lineup, what can you truly expect?
Louis Coleman came in and his struggles continued as he recorded only one out and gave up a run, while Luis Avilan turned in a quality 1.2 innings by striking out three batters. J.P. Howell, for his part, gave up another massive dong in his inning of work.
No highlights today, cause the Dodgers didn’t have any.
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With the loss, the Dodgers fall to 53-43 overall and a terrible 23-25 on the road. In the race for the NL West, the Giants are currently losing to the Red Sox, which would keep things at 4.5 games, but for now the deficit is 5 games. For the NL Wild Card race, both the Marlins and Mets lost, which means the Dodgers are still one game up on Miami for home-field advantage and two games up on New York just to make the game.
The series finale against the Nationals is tomorrow morning at 6:05 AM HST/9:05 AM PST/12:05 PM EST, and it’ll feature a matchup of future against present in Julio Urias (4.95 ERA/3.56 FIP/3.89 SIERA) and Stephen Strasburg (2.51 ERA/2.90 FIP/3.12 SIERA). I bet that’ll go wonderful.
