It was hard to say who was slower on Wednesday night.
The breathtaking pace of a 3 hour and 23 minute game at Dodger Stadium.
Or the astonishing performance of the Dodgers offense after a four-run winning streak in the first inning.
After gaining a lead with a quick four-hitter against Arizona Diamondbacks debutant Cristian Mena, the Dodgers came to an abrupt halt in their 12-4 loss at Chavez Ravine. The team’s subdued play reflected the slow, meandering rhythm of their second-longest nine-inning game of the season.
The night couldn’t have started better for the Dodgers.
With Diamondbacks starter Jordan Montgomery out with a knee injury, Arizona chose Mena, a rookie right-hander, for his MLB debut.
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His reception in the major leagues: A blitz by the Dodgers in the first inning.
Shohei Ohtani hit a single. Will Smith drew a walk. Then Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernández hit back-to-back home runs to answer Arizona’s first run of the second inning, giving Arizona a sudden 4-1 lead.
With outstanding rookie pitcher Gavin Stone on the mound and the Diamondbacks seemingly in for a long night on the mound, all the conditions seemed to be in place for a clear victory for the Dodgers.
Instead, they squandered their early advantage without showing much of their usual fighting spirit.
In the last eight innings, they managed just two hits, had three double plays, and barely came close to scoring another run.
In the third inning, the Dodgers missed a two-base, one-out opportunity when Freeman was doubled off while attempting to score on a flyout.
In the fifth inning, another double play – this time a routine grounder by Hernández – cancelled out Freeman’s one-out walk.
In the sixth inning, the Dodgers finally got another runner in scoring position when Miguel Rojas hit a double off the wall. But as suddenly as the opportunity came, it was gone almost as quickly. Pinch-hitter Kiké Hernández struck out. Chris Taylor grounded out to end the inning.
And even though Arizona led 8-4, the Dodgers were never in danger of catching up.
Stone didn’t help the matter much.
After allowing just one run in the first inning with the bases loaded, he struggled to get into the rhythm in his first start since the shutout against the Chicago White Sox last week.
He brought two batters to the field in the second inning and struggled to finish the inning unscathed.
In the third inning, he finally faltered, allowing a run on a double by Eugenio Suárez and then serving a two-run home run to Gabriel Moreno to tie the game.
While Stone’s night ended after the third inning, the Dodgers’ pitching problems persisted throughout.
Christian Walker continued his career-long dominance of the club by hitting his 16th and 17th career home runs at Dodger Stadium. The first broke a 4-4 tie in the fifth inning, a solo hit against Ryan Yarbrough in the fifth. The second served as a safety in the ninth, a three-run hit that made Walker the stadium’s all-time slugging leader (minimum 100 career batting appearances) with a .741 batting average.
Between Walker’s at-bats, Arizona scored another run in the fifth inning and two more in the sixth on Lourdes Gurriel Jr.’s two-run homer.
Over time, the Dodgers also fell victim to several self-inflicted mistakes.
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Freeman was easily thrown out attempting a sacrifice fly in the third inning when he tried to score on a relatively flat fly ball to right fielder Jake McCarthy. In an at-bat before Gurriel’s bone-crushing home run in the sixth inning, Teoscar Hernández seemed to mistakenly believe Walker had hit another home run to left field when he stopped at the warning track on a double that bounced off the wall and might have been caught.
Roberts also did not contribute to the flow of the game by making a pitcher change in the seventh inning on a 2-and-2 count after reliever Yohan Ramírez’s pitch count rose to 37.
At this point, however, the result was already clear.
The Dodgers had squandered their early lead. They had slumped in the middle of the game. And they quietly suffered one of their worst losses of the season.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
