CHICAGO — Tanner Scott jogged into the madness at Wrigley Field as the Los Angeles Dodgers broached an unfortunate milestone. The Dodgers have played 24 games this season, and as Scott took the mound, they became baseball’s first team to 100 innings thrown by their bullpen. They have not fired on all cylinders this month, and this is just one symptom.
The $72 million closer has endured a weird start to his season, but was an out away from securing an invigorating win by April standards. Instead, Miguel Amaya launched a fastball into the basket in center field to tie the score. The Dodgers lost to the Cubs 11-10 in extra innings. The wind was blowing out, but what should have been a standout night ended with right-hander Noah Davis on the mound, pitching for the first time since he was an Oklahoma City Comet 10 days ago, surrendering a walk-off hit to the Cubs’ Ian Happ.
So it goes for the Dodgers. They entered the day with the best record in baseball, yet the reigning World Series champions have not found their overdrive despite their 17-7 mark. On a night when their dormant offense finally got going and got a late lead, they couldn’t pitch well enough to make it count.
“We still put up 10 runs,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “We’ve got to win that ballgame.”
Dustin May struggled to command just about anything. His fastball drifted over the middle of the plate. His sweeper, which was so critical to his strong start to the season, could not go where he wanted it.
“Nothing was very good today,” May said. He got a three-run lead before throwing a single pitch and ended the first inning with a deficit. The fact that he lasted five innings was more a reflection of the circumstances ahead for the Dodgers, who have a bullpen game scheduled for Wednesday evening, than how he pitched. His 10 hits allowed were a career-high. So were the seven runs he allowed.
“We threw a lot of pitches in the middle of the hitting zone,” Roberts said. May wasn’t alone. “A lot of good pitches to hit. Obviously, wind blowing out, and we just didn’t give ourselves a chance tonight on the pitching side.”
Ian Happ hits a walk-off tenth-inning RBI single against the Dodgers. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
The script was set up for a breakthrough anyway. Tommy Edman broke open the early scoring with a three-run blast off of Shota Imanaga, who had held the Dodgers down whenever he’s seen them over the last two seasons. When they almost immediately fell behind, they chipped away. In the seventh, they put together one of their most cohesive offensive innings of the season to break through and take the lead.
Consider it a reminder of what this lineup was supposed to look like. The Dodgers’ offense has underperformed, ranking outside the top 10 in baseball in runs scored and wRC+. Since the team’s 8-0 start, they averaged 3.6 runs over the 15 games.
When Andy Pages led off the seventh inning with a single off Brad Keller, it marked just the 29th time this season that Shohei Ohtani had come up to the plate with a runner on base. Ohtani followed with a walk. So did Mookie Betts. Every strike was difficult to come by. Just about every mistake was punished. The line kept moving. By the time the inning ended, they’d notched another milestone.
For the first time all season, the Dodgers scored in double digits. The last time it took at least 24 games for the Dodgers to score at least 10 runs in a game came back in 2014, when it took until game No. 57 to notch 12 runs against the Pittsburgh Pirates. That was not supposed to be this lineup, which simply has not gotten going.
It’s a drought that was seemingly hard to fathom. But Ohtani, Betts and Freeman have only been in the lineup at the same time for 10 of those games. The bottom of the order has been floundering, entering Tuesday having received a league-worst .177 batting average from their bottom three hitters. They’ve struggled to put together a consistent offense outside of a three-game set against the bottom-dwelling Colorado Rockies.
Tuesday showed a glimmer of what they should be. They had six outs to get and a three-run advantage. It didn’t stick.
“These guys have played a lot of wild games here, so it’s kind of the expectation when you come in,” said Edman, referencing the Cubs’ win over Arizona on Friday in which they allowed 10 runs in the eighth only to rally and win, anyway.
The Dodgers’ outburst had the same result and same gut-wrenching swing.
Alex Vesia threw a slider that didn’t break to Kyle Tucker. The Cubs’ superstar crushed it into the seats to cut the Dodgers’ lead to one. Scott has struggled to miss bats in the early part of the season, but still was one out away from completing his ninth save in 10 tries. He got ahead, then tried to get a fastball up to Cubs catcher Amaya. It wound up at his belt, square over home plate. Amaya got enough of it over Edman’s outstretched glove in center field.
“I thought it was the right pitch,” Scott said. “Just missed location. Middle-middle is not very good in the big leagues.”
The Dodgers have been largely powered by their bullpen. It’s been the club’s certifiable strength through their first month, a stretch in which they haven’t pitched deep enough into games, have had lapses defensively, and have been prone to droughts offensively. It’s been a burden to bear for a team that hasn’t seemed to play as well as their record would indicate. Everyone’s had to do more.
“We were one out away,” Roberts said. “We just couldn’t put them away.”
(Top photo of Dustin May tossing the baseball after Pete Crow-Armstrong hit a two-run homer: Matt Marton / Imagn Images)