PITTSBURGH — If the Dodgers stay in town long enough, they might be able to revive interest in Pirates baseball.
Word of mouth might take awhile, though, with only around 14,000 and 16,000 noticing the lights were on at PNC Park the past two nights (many of them increasingly disgruntled Dodger fans). But they went home with tales of a Pirates victory each night. Wednesday, it was a combined five-hit shutout by five pitchers to beat the Dodgers, 3-0.
The Dodgers are now 4-11 in their past 15 games against teams with losing records like the NL Central last-place Pittsburgh Pirates and the Arizona Diamondbacks, who took two of three from the Dodgers in L.A. over the weekend.
“Yeah, vice versa it,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said of the Dodgers’ inability to combine good pitching and good hitting on the same night. “We haven’t really put it together at all for awhile now. So we need to start playing better.”
By losing four of their past five games, the Dodgers have wasted an opportunity to pull away from the San Diego Padres in the NL West. The Padres (2½ games back) have lost four consecutive games (including a three-game sweep at Petco Park by another last-place team, the Baltimore Orioles), six of their past seven and eight of their past 10, turning the NL West race into a two-team moonwalk.
“I’m very much aware of that. But they’re feeling the same thing we are,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “We’ve got to control what we can control and we’re certainly not. We’re not.”
Wednesday’s loss could be particularly painful. Catcher Will Smith took a foul tip off his right hand in the second inning and came out of the game. X-rays were negative.
“I’m hopeful we don’t have to put him on the IL,” Roberts said. “We’ll know more tomorrow when he wakes up. See if the swelling dissipates. But we can’t afford to lose him. I guess we’ll know more in the coming days. We’ll probably bring someone just to kind of cover our bases.”
It was Smith’s pinch-hit home run that gave them their only victory in the past five games. Wednesday’s uninspired performance has been more common for weeks now. Since July 4, the Dodgers have gone 22-29, the 12th-best record in the 15-team National League, dragged down primarily by an offense that is underperforming the pedigree of its component parts.
“We’ve talked about team at-bats. I think we’ve had some guys that have bought into that and consistently are doing that,” Roberts said. “I just think that it can’t draw dead in a certain part of the order when innings are built. … There’s a lot of variables that go into scoring runs consistently, certainly if you’re not just slugging.
“It’s a nuanced answer. I don’t have the answer. I do believe that the guys that we have in the room are capable of putting together consistent team at-bats of urgency from the first pitch on. But at the end of the day, I’m sure our players are echoing the same message that we just got to get it done. I can talk about it as much as I want, but we got to get it done. That’s just the bottom line and I don’t have an answer.”
The Dodgers had to be steadfast in their resolve not to score Wednesday.
They loaded the bases with no outs in the second inning after a leadoff single by Freeman and back-to-back walks by Pirates starter Braxton Ashcraft. But Andy Pages chased a pitch out of the strike zone to strike out. Alex Freeland took one in the strike zone to do the same and Kiké Hernandez flew out to right.
“You never want to say that one inning kind of wins or loses a game, but the second inning, bases loaded, nobody out – I just felt that we had two bad at-bats and didn’t come away with anything,” Roberts said. “We had the starter on the ropes and had a chance to get a lead, get the starter out. Building that inning was fantastic. I thought the at-bats, the taking of the walks. Then we get to a position and we didn’t finish. I just think there are a couple at-bats there that, that flipped the game. It flipped the momentum.”
It has become a frequent post-game posture when Roberts meets the media – bemoaning the poor approach of his hitters.
“That’s a situation where you get shorter with your swing, use the big part of the field and you’ve got to drive in a run,” Roberts said this time. “The big swings, the chase, taking pitches in the zone, chasing balls out of the zone – if you have a smaller approach to just drive in that first run, then other things can happen. That’s part of it. It’s frustrating for all of us.”
The Dodgers loaded the bases again in the third inning, this time with two outs, after a single by Dalton Rushing (in for Smith) and another set of back-to-back walks by Ashcraft. Alex Call dribbled a ball in front of home plate and was thrown out by the catcher to end the inning.
That was enough for Ashcraft, who threw 71 pitches in three innings. Reliever Mike Burrows picked up where he left off.
Shohei Ohtani led off the fifth with a double and Mookie Betts followed with a walk. Rushing flew out this time and Freeman hit into a double play.
Ohtani beat out an infield single (his fifth hit in two games) in the seventh inning and Rushing drew a walk to put two runners on with two outs. Freeman flew out to right.
Ohtani’s single was the Dodgers’ last hit of the game. They finished the night 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position and stranded 10 runners on base, seven in the first five innings.
“Obviously, we were feeling pretty good about our at-bats yesterday and the last few days,” Freeman said. “We had good at-bats getting on-base today. We just didn’t get the hit today. The game of baseball is hard. The concept is easy. Hit the ball, catch the ball, get the hits when you need to. We obviously didn’t do that tonight. Just gotta move on to tomorrow.”
They get to try their luck against Cy Young Award contender Paul Skenes on Thursday.
“It loomed. It still bothers me,” Roberts said of the missed opportunities early in the game. “I think the thing is, as we’ve been talking about, is your first at-bat could be your most important at-bat of the game and it could determine the outcome of a game. We’ve got to collectively get all of us on board understanding that, the magnitude of each at-bat, each situation. Right now we’re not all there. We’re not, consistently.
“It flipped the momentum, the game itself. There’s a lot of guys that are still trying to take good at-bats and win pitches and take team at-bats. Other times we’re going away from that. I sound repetitive where it’s got to get better. It’s not easy. Hitting is not easy. But I do believe that having the right approach, the right mindset, the right urgency in our particular at-bat lends itself to better results.”
The Pirates got all the offense they would need when Bryan Reynolds finished a 12-pitch at-bat by lining a home run into the right field seats in the first inning off Dodgers starter Emmet Sheehan.
“He put together a really good at-bat,” Sheehan said. “I was just trying to find a way to get him out, put him away, and then I let the fastball leak over a little too much and he made me pay for it.”
Andrew McCutchen added another solo home run off Sheehan in the second inning. The Pirates added an insurance run against Ben Casparius in the sixth.