Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
A day after the Dodgers clinched the NL West, there’s nothing much to play for, but it’s still a good time to get all the best bats right.
They mostly achieved their goals today, with the bats they needed to get hot smoking the ball and the pitcher they wanted to experiment with delivering in a 6-4 loss, but perhaps another concern creeped up.
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Joe Kelly started the game, because … why not, I guess? Things didn’t go well at all, as he surrendered two doubles, a walk, and a sac fly for three runs with only two earned cause Cody Bellinger‘s throw going into the dugout with nobody backing up. Let’s not do that again.
Brusdar Graterol then entered and got a scoreless frame, seeming like the best candidate to start a pen game in the playoffs.
The bats stayed relatively cool early on, though in the 3rd they got on the board thanks to a Corey Seager single and then a towering dong from Max Muncy to make it 3-2.
Julio Urias then took over in what was essentially a start geared towards getting him used to coming in as a reliever. He pitched amazingly, avoiding his opening inning blues by not pitching in the opening inning. Urias went six innings, giving up just two hits and two walks with five strikeouts. He gave up one run in the 7th to push the A’s lead to 4-2.
Speaking of that, the Dodgers did nothing against Sean Manaea after Muncy’s homer, not getting another hit until Cody Bellinger led off the 7th inning with a solo shot to cut the lead to 4-3.
In the 8th, facing a reliever in Jake Diekman who had not given up a run in a year, Edwin Rios yanked a hard dong down the right-field line to tie it at 4-4.
Unfortunately, Blake Treinen had a bit of a shitfest against his old team, giving up a two-run pissrod into the seats in left for a 6-4 lead to the A’s. That’s now five runs in his last 1.1 innings.
Oh well!
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Walker Buehler faces Mike Fiers tomorrow. Important start for Buehler just from a health perspective.
