SAN DIEGO — Major League Baseball does not have a mercy rule for ending games early.
On Tuesday night at Petco Park, the Dodgers could have used one.
In recent years, the club has punted on plenty of games in the interest of protecting their often injury-riddled and shorthanded pitching staffs. But in an 11-1 loss to the San Diego Padres, they took the act of de facto forfeiture to levels even they hadn’t previously pioneered.
First, they let minor league call-up Matt Sauer wear it — in every definition of the phrase — over a nine-run, 13-hit, 111-pitch outing.
Then, in the face of a nine-run deficit in the bottom of the sixth, they sent position player Kiké Hernández to the mound to pitch the rest of the game.
The Dodgers’ decision to pack it in was rooted in logic.
They are currently operating with only four healthy starting pitchers. Their equally banged-up bullpen is leading the majors in innings, and was coming off five frames of work in an extra-inning win the night before. And by the time Hernández took the mound in the sixth, the game had long been lost, the Padres teeing off on Sauer with three runs in the third inning, single scores in the fourth and fifth, and a four-spot in the sixth.
With Dylan Cease mowing down the Dodgers — the Padres’ ace right-hander gave up three hits and struck out 11 batters over seven scoreless innings — the Dodgers were already turning their attention to Wednesday’s series rubber match, removing Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Teoscar Hernández from the game.
Another factor: Wednesday’s starter for the Dodgers is left-hander Justin Wrobleski, who has a 7.20 ERA in three big league outings this year and has spent much of the campaign in triple A.
Still, a position player taking the mound in the sixth inning to finish off a blowout loss represented an almost unprecedented use of the tactic; one that has become so popular among MLB clubs in recent years that the league has put in restrictions for when teams can do it.
Two years ago, the Cleveland Guardians had Matt Fry pitch four innings at the end of a rout against the Minnesota Twins. Before that, a true position player hadn’t pitched three innings in a game since 1988, according to USA Today.
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