An eye-watering, cough-inducing thick stench of burning plastic permeated Dodger Stadium on Sunday morning. The smoke from the Boyle Heights warehouse fire had spread into every crevice and corner of the facility, inescapable despite the masks handed out to staff.
“It’s a little dark out there, little Gotham City when I was driving up,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
Major League Baseball approved the Father’s Day game to be played, according to Roberts. Still, the ominous atmosphere was hard to miss. When rolling up Vin Scully Avenue, a white smoke hung like a curtain behind the small hills on the other side of outfield walls, obscuring the normally scenic view of the San Gabriel Mountains.
Perhaps that should’ve been the first sign things wouldn’t go as planned for the Dodgers, who lost 12-1 to the Orioles. The loss marked the first time the Dodgers (49-29) have lost consecutive games since May 12.
“It just wasn’t a great start for our team, and offensively we weren’t very good,” Roberts said. “Feel fortunate we won a game this series.”
By the time Emmet Sheehan took the mound, the smell had diluted, and the sunshine broke through the haze. The 26-year-old hasn’t won in more than a month, despite what at the time appeared to be a bounce-back performance against the Chicago White Sox last week. Sheehan lasted 3 1/3 innings against Baltimore, none particularly worse than the first.
Sheehan (3-5) loaded the bases, and Orioles catcher Samuel Basallo put Baltimore (37-42) on the scoreboard with a softly hit ball that split first baseman Freddie Freeman and right fielder Kyle Tucker. A two-out single by Colton Cowser put the Orioles up by two. With the bases loaded, Sheehan worked out of trouble with two strikeouts and a pop out. But the inning cost him four hits and nearly 30 pitches.
“At this point, my coaches, my teammates deserve better,” Sheehan said.
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Sheehan struggled the most with his slider. Normally, the pitch elicits about a 43% chase rate, though against Baltimore it plummeted to 18%. The nosedive, mainly caused by his inability to throw the slider in the zone, made his other pitches look less competitive, and the Orioles started connecting with his fastball. He gave up two home runs on the pitch to Taylor Ward in the second and Cowser in the third.
“He wasn’t sharp,” Roberts said. “The slider wasn’t in the zone, they were seeing him well, he wasn’t efficient.”
Meanwhile, Max Muncy drove in the Dodgers’ only run in the first with a line drive to left field. Shohei Ohtani, who had reached first on a walk and took second on Freeman’s single, slid home as the throw came in. However, the ball bounced off Basallo’s gear and ricocheted away from the plate.
The Orioles scored runs in four consecutive innings before Edgardo Henriquez threw a 1-2-3 inning in the fifth. The team tacked on four runs in the seventh, when, with a man on, the Dodgers reliever Jonathan Hernández intentionally walked Gunnar Henderson, who had gone two for four. He then threw a belt-high sinker down the middle of the plate that Pete Alonso smashed into the right-field bleachers for a three-run homer. Hernández could only watch the ball soar, hunched over.
Blaze Alexander hit a two-run homer in the eighth. But position-player pitcher Miguel Rojas dealt a 1-2-3 ninth inning, one of the team’s three innings it held the Orioles scoreless. By then, the skies had cleared enough for the faint outline of the San Gabriel Mountains to appear. The Dodgers, though, finished the game as uncompetitive as it had started.
“It’s everywhere in baseball, to be quite honest, but my concern is our team,” Roberts said of the Dodgers’ recent performances. “I don’t know the answer. It happens sporadically with all teams.”
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Injury updates
Catcher Will Smith will not travel with the team this week as they take on the Twins and the Padres, Roberts said before the game. Smith is expected to participate in some baseball activities and will have a better estimate of his return depending on how he feels after.
Teoscar Hernández is slated to play in a rehab assignment Tuesday with the triple-A Oklahoma City Comets before joining the team for its final June series against the Athletics.
Reliever Blake Treinen, on the 15-day injured list with right elbow inflammation, got some good news. The MRI did not show any structural damage, only inflammation that Roberts attributed to the wear and tear of the season. “I don’t think it’ll be a long thing,” Roberts said. “Obviously, he’s on the IL, so it’s going to be two weeks, but hopefully it’s not much more beyond that.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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