DETROIT — The same old story played out for the Dodgers on Saturday. They got a strong outing from their starting pitcher and an uninspiring performance by their offense, resulting in a close game.
This time the Dodgers lost, 2-1, despite left-hander Blake Snell’s five innings of one-run baseball.
The Dodgers’ last five games have been decided by one run. They’ve lost all but one of them.
It was Snell’s fourth game back from arthroscopic elbow surgery in May. He’s limited opponents to one run or none in every start. Saturday marked the first time he threw fewer than six innings since being activated this month.
He limited the Tigers to three hits and issued three walks. Four of those six baserunners reached before Snell briefly left the game in the third inning.
Snell had cruised through the first two innings, a Texas leaguer into shallow right field the only blemish on an otherwise perfect beginning.
The third inning, however, started to go haywire. Snell walked Javier Báez, traditionally a free swinger, to open the frame. Tigers rookie Max Clark laid down a sacrifice bunt, but Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy lost control of the ball as he tried to throw to first, enabling Clark to reach base as Báez advanced to second.
Against Gleyber Torres, Snell left a changeup too far over the plate for a ground-rule double. The high hop over the yellow line on the right-field fence saved a run, sending Clark back to third, but the Tigers pulled ahead 1-0.
Snell threw two pitches to Hao-Yu Lee and then, after a conversation with home plate umpire Chris Guccione, headed off the field and disappeared down the dugout tunnel.
There was no immediate explanation provided by the team or the umpires. One theory was that he might have been given permission to change cleats to prevent slipping on the mound. Snell returned soon after, and resumed his outing with a 1-1 count on Lee.
Snell got out of the inning without further damage, inducing Lee to pop out and, after walking Kevin McGonigle, striking out Dillon Dingler and Eduardo Valencia.
He made it six straight punch outs by striking out the side in the fourth and kicking off a scoreless fifth with another. Snell’s outing ended with Dingler waving at an outside fastball for strike three.
The Dodgers offense, however, failed to give him run support. Through five innings, they mustered only two baserunners against Tigers starer Keider Montero.
In the sixth, they finally strung multiple hits together and got a run out of it. Alek Thomas led off the inning with a double to left field, which ricocheted off the wall on a hop. Shohei Ohtani grounded out on a close play at first, moving Thomas to third. Then Freddie Freeman lined an RBI single to right.
The Dodgers went on to load the bases with one out. But, following a concerning pattern, they failed to squeeze any more runs out of the opportunity.
The Dodgers entered Saturday batting .211 with the bases loaded since the beginning of August, putting them in the bottom third in the majors. And when Tommy Edman grounded into a double play to end the sixth inning, it marked the third time this month that the Dodgers have grounded into a double play with the bases loaded.
In the top of the ninth, the Dodgers came feet away from pulling ahead. With two outs and a runner on first, the Tigers brought in closer Kenley Jansen, a former Dodger, to face Teoscar Hernández.
In an 0-2 count, Hernández sent a cutter for a ride to deep left-center field. But Báez, playing left field, made an over-the-shoulder catch a few steps from the wall.
Dodgers left-hander Jack Dreyer took the mound for the bottom half of the inning and, with runners on the corners, he gave up a walk-off single (there is no ground-rule double on a game-ending hit) to McGonigle.
The post Blake Snell outdueled as Dodgers fall to Tigers in another one-run game appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
