{"id":85325,"date":"2025-07-23T07:18:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T07:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/85325\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T07:18:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T07:18:08","slug":"bullpen-sinks-slumping-dodgers-again-in-loss-to-twins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/85325\/","title":{"rendered":"Bullpen sinks slumping Dodgers again in loss to Twins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

They missed high, wide and, in one of the most confounding plays you\u2019ll see on a major league diamond, even on a relatively routine throw to first base.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers<\/a> know this isn\u2019t the bullpen they expected to have at the moment. They have been resigned to playing the long game, trying to weather key injuries and extended absences with a revolving door of minor-league call-ups.<\/p>\n

But in a 10-7 loss<\/a> to the Minnesota Twins on Tuesday night, even they couldn\u2019t have foreseen the shockingly sloppy pitching that doomed them late.<\/p>\n

In the sixth and seventh innings at Dodger Stadium, the Twins scored six runs without hardly even needing to swing. Over the two innings, Minnesota managed only two hits. But on a night that one Dodger reliever after the next struggled to find the strike zone, a parade of walks (plus one glaring defensive error) kept them circling the bases, turning what had been a tie score into one of the Dodgers\u2019 most dismal defeats of the season.<\/p>\n

\u201cTonight, it just wasn\u2019t pretty,\u201d manager Dave Roberts said of the Dodgers\u2019 11th loss in their last 14 games. \u201cWhen you\u2019re walking guys and the defense is spotty and things like that, it wasn\u2019t a good one.\u201d<\/p>\n

The nightmare started with Ben Casparius, who replaced Yoshinobu Yamamoto after a laborious five-inning, three-run (one earned) start.<\/p>\n

Right away, Casparius\u2019 command looked off. He walked one batter on five pitches, then another after a Ty France double to load the bases. Up next came Royce Lewis, who took a first-pitch cutter inside before watching each of Casparius\u2019 next three throws sail well above the zone. It was a four-pitch walk that forced in a go-ahead run. And as Lewis trotted to first, Casparius grabbed at his right leg and called for a trainer, exiting the game with what he said was a calf cramp.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last couple pitches of warmups, I kind of felt my foot give a little bit, like a Charley horse feeling, clenched up,\u201d said Casparius, who will get an MRI on Wednesday to rule out anything more serious. \u201cHoping [it was just] unbearable cramps, but we\u2019re gonna see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alexis Diaz, the former All-Star Cincinnati Reds closer who was making his first appearance for the Dodgers since being acquired in a minor-league trade earlier this season, couldn\u2019t escape the jam he inherited unscathed. Harrison Bader drove in a run on a swinging bunt up the third base line. Christian V\u00e1zquez added another with an RBI single to left.<\/p>\n

And though the Dodgers answered back with two runs in the bottom half of the inning, trimming the deficit to 6-5 on a two-run Hyeseong Kim single, the pitching staff made sure the momentum didn\u2019t last.<\/p>\n

In the seventh, hard-throwing right-hander Will Klein took over, but succumbed to the same fate as Casparius. After striking out Willi Castro, he walked each of his next three batters on pitches that drifted progressively farther from the plate.<\/p>\n

The final indignity belonged to Edgardo Henriquez, who marked his return to the majors with a comical bit of pitchers\u2019 fielding practice.<\/p>\n

After starting Lewis, his first batter, with a wild cutter that sent catcher Will Smith sprawling behind the plate, Henriquez executed a better one on the outside corner to induce an excuse-me swing.<\/p>\n

The only problem: The ball went trickling back toward Henriquez in front of the mound, where he first bobbled it, then made an ill-advised decision to try and compensate with a rocket of a throw to first base.<\/p>\n

It missed \u2014 horrendously \u2014 zipping past Freddie Freeman and rolling all the way to the wall in right field while all three baserunners came around to score.<\/p>\n

Most of the crowd groaned. Others, surely, couldn\u2019t help but quietly laugh in pitiful misery.<\/p>\n

In what is shaping up to be one of the Dodgers\u2019 worst single-month performances in years (they are now 6-11 in July, and have dropped four of five since the All-Star break), this was a new nadir.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt better be rock bottom, as far as how we\u2019ve been pitching, how we\u2019ve been playing defense,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cAs far as quality of baseball, it\u2019s been a tough watch. It really has.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, the Dodgers (59-43<\/a>) disappointed in myriad other ways Tuesday.<\/p>\n

There was the three-run rally they gifted the Twins (49-52) in the second inning, when Miguel Rojas misplayed a grounder at third base and Yamamoto hung a two-strike splitter that V\u00e1zquez belted for a two-run double.<\/p>\n

There were squandered opportunities from what remains an out-of-sync offense, which got an early three-run home run from Andy Pages and a garbage-time two-run home run from Shohei Ohtani (his fourth-straight game going deep), but also hit into three rally-killing double plays.<\/p>\n

Still, nothing stood out more than the woeful relief pitching, where a unit currently without half a dozen important pieces (including, most recently, Tanner Scott, who went on the injured list pregame with what the Dodgers were thankful to learn wasn\u2019t a season-ending elbow injury) came unraveled trying to lean on unreliable replacements.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve got to throw strikes. They\u2019ve got to put guys away. They\u2019ve got to be efficient,\u201d Roberts said of the current relief corps, which is desperately awaiting the return of injured veterans and reinforcements at the trade deadline. <\/p>\n

\u201cSome of these guys, you can\u2019t protect them. They\u2019re going to be in leverage because of who we\u2019ve got in the pen. So that\u2019s just kind of where we\u2019re at. I look at it as these guys are getting opportunities, golden opportunities. It\u2019s what they make of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They missed high, wide and, in one of the most confounding plays you\u2019ll see on a major league…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":85326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[11632,32162,19497,57677,2442,57674,5948,1266,21700,51384,57675,26094,10201,62,57676,57673,67,132,68,20410],"class_list":{"0":"post-85325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-batter","9":"tag-ben-casparius","10":"tag-bullpen","11":"tag-christian-vazquez","12":"tag-dodgers","13":"tag-edgardo-henriquez","14":"tag-loss","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-pitch","17":"tag-plate","18":"tag-routine-throw","19":"tag-royce-lewis","20":"tag-run","21":"tag-sports","22":"tag-third-base-line","23":"tag-twins","24":"tag-united-states","25":"tag-unitedstates","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-yoshinobu-yamamoto"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85325","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=85325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}