Not a pitch was thrown with the Dodgers trailing, and yet they found themselves on the losing end of a 3-2 matchup, all thanks to a walk-off solo shot from Ketel Marte off Tanner Scott. Justin Wrobleski did his part by delivering six scoreless innings, but the offense was underwhelming without Shohei Ohtani, and a couple of hiccups from the Dodgers bullpen were all that Arizona needed to complete the comeback and split this four-game set.<\/p>\n
After going scoreless in the first four innings, the Dodgers offense began the fifth with a bang, but it wasn\u2019t the bang of a long home run; instead, it was a collision between Max Muncy and Ildemaro Vargas on a race to first base that saw both players leave the game early. Muncy beat out Vargas to the bag, which forced LA to bring in a pinch-runner in Santiago Espinal, who came around to score on a Ryan Ward double. The bottom of the order kept pushing the envelope as Dalton Rushing doubled the lead, an advantage that Los Angeles would maintain until the bottom of the eighth.<\/p>\n
Speaking of Rushing, the young catcher also showed poise and a good eye behind the plate to help Wrobleski navigate through his one troublesome inning in the sixth. A pair of two-out hits had Pavin Smith up, who came into the game to replace Vargas, with runners at second and third\u2014in fact, the score would\u2019ve been 2-1 if Arenado wasn\u2019t such a slow runner at this point in his career. The umpire missed the call on the first two pitches, and twice Rushing called a challenge to overturn his decision, ultimately leading to an easy groundout on a down-and-away 0-2 slider. Rushing had one more successful and important overturned challenge, earning Kyle Hurt a strikeout in the seventh after a 2-2 changeup to Tommy Troy had originally been called a ball. Rushing\u2019s work behind the plate deserves praise because it\u2019s not just about getting the challenges right but also about utilizing them in the most important moments.<\/p>\n
Other than that one questionable inning, Wrobleski once again thrived in generating soft contact, keeping a low pitch count, needing just 84 to cover the six scoreless innings. Becoming known for his lengthy outings, Wrobleski was on his way to 10 straight outings involved in a decision, potentially earning the win in eight of them, but Arizona had something to say about that. After Hurt\u2019s scoreless frame, Will Klein couldn\u2019t replicate the same level of efficiency, opening up the eighth with a solo shot to Corbin Carroll and creating a mess that Alex Vesia couldn\u2019t clean up, with the lefty later allowing an RBI single to Geraldo Perdomo.<\/p>\n
Muncy\u2019s early departure would come back to bite the Dodgers in the ninth because Shohei Ohtani got ready to hit, but couldn\u2019t pinch hit for Santiago Espinal with Will Smith at second following an RBI double since the Dodgers didn\u2019t have any hitters left on the bench. Alex Call and Miguel Rojas had both been used as pinch-hitters against a left-handed pitcher in the previous inning. Instead of using Ohtani, Espinal was punched out, and Marte went yard in the bottom of the ninth with a blast.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a quick turnaround for the NL West leaders coming home for the Freeway Series over the weekend. Roki Sasaki starts on Friday night (7:10 p.m. PT), with the Angels yet to announce their starting pitcher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not a pitch was thrown with the Dodgers trailing, and yet they found themselves on the losing end…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,258265,462,82],"class_list":["post-716370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dodgers-scores-standings","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}