LOS ANGELES — With each call to the bullpen Tuesday night, the Dodgers’ need became more glaring.
With the score tied after five innings, Ben Casparius failed to retire any of the four batters he faced in the sixth, walking three of them and then – this part will sound familiar – leaving the game with an injury. The Minnesota Twins went on to score six times against the Dodgers relievers who were summoned by Dave Roberts in the sixth and seventh innings and handed the Dodgers their latest loss, 10-7.
Casparius and Will Klein combined to walk six of the eight batters they faced in those two innings. Edgardo Henriquez had his own control problems. He fielded a ground ball near the first-base line and fired it into right field, allowing three runs to score.
The loss was the Dodgers’ 11th in their past 14 games and left thousands of empty seats to boo Carlos Correa when he batted in the ninth inning.
“It better be rock bottom, as far as how we’ve been pitching, how we’ve been playing defense,” Roberts said. “I think the offense is starting to kind of tick up, which is good. There’s certainly more in there, will be more in there.
“But yeah, I think as far as quality of baseball, it’s been a tough watch. It really has.”
If Casparius joins Tanner Scott (who left Monday’s game with an elbow injury) on the injured list, he would be the 13th Dodgers pitcher currently on the IL. Henriquez and Alexis Diaz became the 34th and 35th pitchers to appear for the Dodgers this season (not including position players Miguel Rojas and Kiké Hernandez).
“It’s difficult. This is the guys we have right now. And they’re getting opportunities to make an impression. So that’s on them,” Roberts said. “When you have certain guys down, you’re put in leverage, bases loaded, nobody out, whatever it might be, you’ve gotta come in there and do your job. Some guys are, some guys aren’t.
“Every day is a test. We’re about winning every day. So it’s tough. Because you get count leverage in certain situations and you can’t put a guy away and you give up a two-strike hit. You don’t get the (No.) eight hitter out, the nine hitter out with count leverage. So there’s things that we’re doing right now that we need to be better at.”
Poor defense led to a three-run inning for the Twins in the second inning against Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a foreshadowing of things to come.
With runners at the corners, Royce Lewis chopped a ground ball to third baseman Miguel Rojas but Rojas didn’t field it cleanly, deflecting it to shortstop Mookie Betts who tried to throw to second base for a force out. His throw pulled Hyeseong Kim off the base at second. A run scored on the play.
Yamamoto struck out Harrison Bader for what could have been the last out of the inning. Instead, he left a 1-and-2 splitter up over the heart of the plate and Christian Vazquez lined it off the wall in left center field. Two runs scored on the double, both unearned.
“First of all, I gave up a walk. So that’s how it started,” Yamamoto said through his interpreter. “If I could get out of the inning with just one run, I think this game would probably be a little bit different.”
Two innings later, the Dodgers did get all three back when Twins starter Simeon Woods Richardson walked the first two batters in the fourth inning and Andy Pages tied the score with a three-run home run.
But Yamamoto’s pitch count cracked 100 in the fifth inning and Roberts called on Casparius in the sixth. He wrapped two walks around a double by Ty France to load the bases then walked Matt Wallner on four pitches to force in a run.
“The last couple pitches of warmups, I kind of felt my foot give a little bit, like a Charley horse feeling, clenched up,” said Casparius, who will get an MRI on Wednesday.
“Obviously, I’ve felt pretty good this whole year, so for it to be something like this and not arm-related is tough, but I’m hoping it’s not a crazy setback.”
Roberts and a trainer came out to the mound after that and Casparius exited with cramping in his right calf. Fresh up from Triple-A, Diaz gave up a run on a ground out and another on a single before getting out of the inning.
The Dodgers answered back with a two-out, two-run single from Kim to make it a one-run game. Then the wheels came off.
Klein struck out the first batter in the seventh then walked the next three. Henriquez came in and got Lewis to dribble a ball up the first-base line. He bobbled it momentarily then fired it wide of first base and into right field. Three runs scored on the error and the Twins added another run in the ninth.
“You look at the guys in the ’pen, just not throwing strikes,” said Roberts, who saw his staff throw 193 pitches. “They scratch and claw back and then you give free passes and that’s just a bad quality of life. Tonight, that’s what happened.
“They’ve got to throw strikes. They’ve got to put guys away. They’ve got to be efficient. Limit the walks, minimize the walks. But like I said, these are the guys we’ve got. We’ve got guys coming (back from injuries). But some of these guys, you can’t protect them. They’re going to be in leverage because of who we’ve got in the ’pen. So that’s just kind of where we’re at. I look at it as these guys are getting opportunities, golden opportunities. It’s what they make of it.”
Shohei Ohtani hit a two-run home run in the ninth before Jhoan Duran could close it out for the Twins. It was Ohtani’s fourth consecutive game with a homer, the longest streak of his career.