ARLINGTON, Texas — During the Texas Rangers’ residency at The Ballpark in Arlington, visiting pitchers often found themselves suffering from meat sweats and inflated ERAs – victims of the Rangers’ beefy lineups, a hitter-friendly environment and the greasy film that seemed to be left on everything by the Nolan Ryan Beef cooked in quantity there.
Across the street at Globe Life Field now, the hitting environment is more neutral, the Rangers’ lineup is underperforming so far this year – and the ventilation is better even with the roof closed.
But the Dodgers still got burned. Adolis Garcia’s two-run walk-off home run off Kirby Yates turned a one-run Dodger lead into a 4-3 loss Saturday afternoon.
The blown save by Yates wasted the best performance yet from Roki Sasaki.
The young right-hander retired the first six batters he faced despite a significant drop in velocity – 3 mph off his four-seam fastball in the early going. Andy Pages made the play of the day, going to the wall and robbing Corey Seager of a home run in the first inning.
A pitch-clock violation helped him walk Dustin Harris to start the third inning and he left a 94.5 mph fastball up in the zone to Kyle Higashioka, who lined it over the wall in left field for a two-run home run.
Sasaki walked Seager later in the inning but was never in danger again. He finished six innings on 78 pitches, allowing just two hits, walking three and striking out four. Higashioka was the last runner to reach second base against Sasaki.
After using his slider sparingly in his previous two starts, Sasaki threw it more often than his splitter (25-23) against the Rangers and almost as many as he had thrown in his previous starts combined (34). The velocity on that was down along with his fastball, which averaged 94.4 mph Saturday, down from 96.9 mph over his first four starts. But he threw both for strikes more effectively than he had in his early starts.
The Dodgers erased Sasaki’s lone mistake in the fourth inning when Mookie Betts led off with a single and Freddie Freeman followed with a 404-foot drive into the right-field seats. The two-run home run tied the game and Texas starter Nathan Eovaldi helped them take the lead.
After Michael Conforto singled with one out, Eovaldi tried to pick him off – but no one was covering first base. The wild throw moved Conforto to second base and allowed him to score when Max Muncy bounced a ground-rule double over the wall in center field.
Eovaldi allowed just one other hit in his six innings, striking out seven.
Jack Dreyer, Evan Phillips (in his season debut) and Alex Vesia carried the one-run lead safely into the ninth inning. But Yates was vulnerable from the start.
A replay review confirmed that Josh Smith’s fly ball leading off the ninth inning curved just foul down the right-field line, postponing the finish. Smith sliced a double down the left-field line instead and scored ahead of Garcia’s no-doubt drive into the left-field seats.