The result was historic. The way it happened was all too familiar.<\/p>\n
Never before, since interleague play began in 1997, had the Dodgers<\/a> been swept in a six-game season series against the Angels.<\/p>\n But plenty of times in recent weeks had they suffered the kind of fate that befell them Wednesday.<\/p>\n Entering the eighth inning, the team was leading by one run. Without many trustworthy options in a recently scuffling bullpen, however, manager Dave Roberts had few cards to play from his deck.<\/p>\n First, he sent left-hander Justin Wrobleski out for a third inning of work. When he walked the first two batters, Roberts turned to right-hander Edgardo Henriquez, who had pitched multiple innings the night before.<\/p>\n You can probably guess what happened next.<\/p>\n Despite perfectly defending a sacrifice bunt to get the lead runner at third, the Dodgers again failed to escape a late-game threat. With one out, Jo Adell hit what looked like a possible double-play grounder \u2014 only for Henriquez to deflect the ball on an ill-advised fielding attempt and send it rolling away for an infield single.<\/p>\n Two batters later, Logan O\u2019Hoppe roped a go-ahead, two-out base hit into center.<\/p>\n Another lead had been squandered by the bullpen. Another loss \u2014 the Dodgers\u2019 fourth straight, and 21st in their last 33 games \u2014 had been all but cemented.<\/p>\n With a 6-5 defeat<\/a>, the Dodgers were swept for the second time this season by the Angels. They also fell out of first place<\/a> in the National League West for the first time since April.<\/p>\n It was yet another day they could only shake their head.<\/p>\n Wednesday was supposed to be about Shohei Ohtani, who was making his first pitching start as a visitor at his old home ballpark at Angel Stadium.<\/p>\n It was also Ohtani\u2019s first full-length outing since returning from a second career Tommy John surgery earlier this year. But even the two-way star could only conjure so much magic.<\/p>\n After building up inning by inning since his return to pitching, Ohtani\u2019s leash was extended into the fifth for the first time this season \u2014 a target length the Dodgers don\u2019t plan on having him surpass at least until the playoffs.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s just such a valuable player to us offensively, as a pitcher,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cSo to push for an extra inning, or call it five extra innings in totality, it\u2019s just not worth it. There\u2019s just way too much downside.\u201d<\/p>\n And by the time Ohtani took the mound for the first time, he\u2019d already helped the Dodgers take an early lead, beginning the game with a scorching line-drive triple before Mookie Betts singled him home and Will Smith went deep to make a three-run first inning.<\/p>\n The two-way star gave up two runs in the second, one on a Taylor Ward home run, then another after Yo\u00e1n Moncada doubled and came around to score on a sacrifice fly, but the Dodgers restored their three-run advantage with a two-run rally in the fourth; one that featured three walks (including one from Ohtani and a run-scoring free pass from Smith) and an RBI single from Betts (who extended his hitting streak to eight games, five of which have been multi-hit efforts).<\/p>\n Ohtani\u2019s first foray into the fifth inning didn\u2019t go smoothly. O\u2019Hoppe and Bryce Teodosio hit consecutive one-out singles. Zach Neto laced a two-run double into the left-field corner that kicked away from Alex Call. And with his pitch count up to a season-high of 80, Roberts went to get him before he could qualify for the win.<\/p>\n Reliever Anthony Banda escaped the inning without further damage. Ohtani\u2019s final line was 4 1\/3 innings, four runs, five hits and seven strikeouts (two of them against former Angels co-star Mike Trout). His season ERA is now 3.47. He has 32 strikeouts in 23\u2154 innings.<\/p>\n And for a while, it appeared the score would remain that way \u2014 until yet another late-game collapse sent the Dodgers to another maddening setback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The result was historic. The way it happened was all too familiar. Never before, since interleague play began…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":144357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[85575,2379,11632,6682,1910,5615,85573,1266,8328,26804,10201,85574,5950,62,6620,85572,67,132,68,15613],"class_list":{"0":"post-144356","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag--inning","9":"tag-angels","10":"tag-batter","11":"tag-eighth-inning","12":"tag-game","13":"tag-lead","14":"tag-logan-ohoppe","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-ohtani","17":"tag-roberts","18":"tag-run","19":"tag-scuffling-bullpen","20":"tag-season","21":"tag-sports","22":"tag-time","23":"tag-tumbling-dodgers","24":"tag-united-states","25":"tag-unitedstates","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-wednesday"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115025624802670678","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}