Over three nights in Pittsburgh this week, the Dodgers didn’t win a game, despite playing a last-place Pirates club.
They didn’t grow their division lead, despite the second-place San Diego Padres suffering their own three-game sweep.
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And, as veteran infielder Miguel Rojas stressed Thursday night, they simply didn’t look like a team capable of sharing in any joy, despite their constant insistence that better play will materialize.
“I feel like ever since we started playing poorly a couple months ago, the pressure and frustration has been building up on the team,” Rojas said.
“We know what we’re capable of. We’re playing under the threshold, the goal that we have. But at the end of the day, we gotta put all that aside … and we have to find some joy and some motivation to come to the ballpark. Not just, ‘I gotta do my job.’ We have to come here and enjoy ourselves around the clubhouse, regardless of the situation.”
The situation, of course, looks bleak, with Thursday’s 5-3 loss to the Pirates sealing a confounding three-game sweep.
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“It’s frustrating. It’s embarrassing,” Rojas said. “But we have to be able to turn the page and come tomorrow with a better attitude. … We have to find a way to enjoy the game a little bit more.”
This loss, granted, was the easiest to explain.
In six scoreless innings, Cy Young frontrunner Paul Skenes was his typically dominant self. Already the major-league ERA leader, the second-year right-hander stuck out eight batters, gave up just two hits, escaped his only real threat by stranding a pair of two-out baserunners in the third inning, and otherwise overpowered the Dodgers with a seven-pitch repertoire headlined by his upper-90s mph sidearm fastball.
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His counterpart, two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell, was nowhere near top form, giving up five runs in five innings despite largely limiting much hard contact.
The Dodgers (78-62) did finally show some life offensively in the top of the ninth, scoring three times (their first runs since the eighth inning of Tuesday’s game) and putting the tying run on base. But by then, it was too little, too late — with the game ending on a three-pitch strikeout by newly called-up catcher Ben Rortvedt, the latest hair-pulling moment in a season of deflation.
“We’re just not playing good baseball, that’s really it,” Snell said. “We’ve got to figure that out. That’s on us to do that. We’ve got to get it going. It’s crunch time right now. Can’t really have excuses.”
Pirates starting pitcher Paul Skenes delivers against the Dodgers on Thursday. (Justin Berl / Getty Images)
Indeed, the Dodgers lead the NL West by only two games — having missed a chance to create distance in the standings after the Padres unexpectedly dropped three straight against the Baltimore Orioles earlier in the week.
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They also trail the Philadelphia Phillies by three games for a top-two seed in the NL playoff picture, placing themselves in danger of facing a three-game wild-card series rather than a first-round bye.
With 22 games remaining, the Dodgers would have to be perfect the rest of the way to reach the 100-win mark. At this point, even 90 victories feels far from a certainty, given the team’s 4-12 record in their last 16 against teams with losing records.
“I want to say it’s uncharacteristic, but I think we’ve done that a lot,” manager Dave Roberts acknowledged afterward.
And when facing the current best pitcher in the sport, they certainly never seemed poised to change that trend.
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Skenes set the tone immediately on what had been a rainy evening in Pittsburgh. Shohei Ohtani struck out on a 99-mph heater in the game’s first at-bat. The next seven Dodgers who came to the plate all recorded outs, flailing at Skenes’ mix of four-seamers, sweepers, curveballs and changeups to allow him to quickly find a comfortable rhythm.
It wasn’t until Dalton Rushing — who started in place of an injured Will Smith, as the team’s starting catcher awaited results on a CT scan for a bruised hand he suffered the night before — hit a third-inning fastball high off the center-field wall for a double that gave the Dodgers their first baserunner. But, after an Ohtani walk, Mookie Betts grounded out to retire that threat.
From there, the only other damage Skenes allowed was a fifth-inning single from Rojas. And though the Dodgers’ ability to at least foul off two-strike pitches — they fought off 15 in all — at least got him out of the game after six innings, it was already too late to mount a comeback.
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That’s because, unlike the Dodgers, the last-place Pirates (64-77) actually managed to build rallies against another of the game’s other top pitchers.
Snell’s outing was a grind from the start, with Rushing misfiring to first base for an error in the first inning and Betts reacting slowly to a ground ball at shortstop to extend the second.
Snell worked around those jams. In the third, however, he followed a leadoff single by Bryan Reynolds with a pair of wild pitches that got by Rushing. With Reynolds suddenly on third, and the Dodgers’ infield forced to play in, Tommy Pham slapped a single through the dirt for the night’s opening run.
Dodgers pitcher Blake Snell delivers in the second inning Thursday against the Pirates. (Justin Berl / Getty Images)
Two innings later, the Pirates broke it open.
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In the fifth, Snell gave up three consecutive singles that doubled Pittsburgh’s lead. Then, after an intentional one-out walk to Andrew McCutchen, Nick Yorke went after a first-pitch curveball for a two-run double down the line. McCutchen later scored from third on a grounder.
“It just seemed like today there was some seeing-eye single, balls finding the outfield grass,” Roberts said. “I thought he was good, not great. But again, a little bit unlucky. When you’re facing Paul Skenes, you just can’t afford to give up runs.”
If all that wasn’t enough, the game ended with another regrettable sequence in the ninth. Betts broke up the shutout with a leadoff home run. Singles from Teoscar Hernández, Michael Conforto, Andy Pages and Rojas brought around two more runs with the Dodgers down to their last out.
Then, however, Rortvedt came up as their ill-fated final hope.
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A career minor-leaguer whom the Dodgers acquired from the Tampa Bay Rays at the trade deadline, then called up Thursday after Smith took a foul ball off his hand the night before, Rortvedt struck out after having replaced Rushing an inning earlier.
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As Roberts explained postgame, he was trying to get Rushing (a rookie who has been a backup this season, but will likely start the next three games as Smith recovers from his bruised hand) off his feet. Given the way the game had gone, he wasn’t expecting Rushing’s spot in the order (which was due up eighth in the ninth inning) to come back up again.
“Obviously, in a separate world, I would’ve loved to have had Dalton up there,” Roberts said. “But when you have three hits through eight [innings] and you’re down 5-0, just kind of trying to figure out how to preserve him for the next few days, too.”
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So it goes for the Dodgers right now. Their inconsistent lineup continues to scuffle. Their supposed strength of a rotation hasn’t been able to dominate. And, with their record an incomprehensible 22-30 since July 4, there remains no end in sight to their second-half slide — nor visible signs of anything other than frustration.
“I feel like, as an offense, we’re putting a little bit too much pressure on ourselves, because we feel the necessity of winning. And we’re really forgetting about the most important part, which is playing for each other and having some joy when we play this game,” Rojas said.
“We all know, when you’re losing baseball games it’s not that fun. But I feel like we have to find a way to put everything in perspective. We’re still in first place. We’re still two games ahead of the Padres. We should be able to have some fun while we’re playing the game, and kind of relax a little bit more. Because I think when this team is together like that, we’re really hard to beat.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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