Hitting only a minor part
Puig returns to lineup and Dodgers win with a lot of help from Arizona pitchers.
Nothing like a little goodnatured teasing from the ones you love. Yasiel Puig loves to bestow his smooches upon his hitting coach, Turner Ward.
So, when Puig rejoined the Dodgers on Wednesday, after failing to get a hit in his one-game minor league rehabilitation assignment, Ward needled him near the batting cage.
“I thought, when you go on a rehab assignment, you’re supposed to hit before you come back,” Ward said.
Yeah, about that. The Dodgers were so desperate for hits that they did not need Puig to waste any of his in the California League. They were right about that. What they did not realize was that they could beat up their nemesis by scoring four runs, all without a hit.
Puig got three hits, the only player on the home team with more than one. The Dodgers scored on a sacrifice fly, on a hit batter and twice on wild pitches.
In their final at-bat, they finally scored on a hit: a pinch-hit, two-run double by Chase Utley. Not much, and just enough, for the Dodgers to emerge with a 6-3 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks.
There was little artful
about the victory. Not in the first inning, when Enrique Hernandez misplayed a fly ball into an inside-the-park home run. Not in the seventh inning, when J.T. Chargois faced six batters, with four reaching base.
But all’s well that ends well, and this one ended with a Kenley Jansen save. With a loss, the Dodgers would have fallen 10 games behind the first-place Diamondbacks.
With the win, the deficit is eight. Not great, but the Dodgers can take comfort in knowing they split six games against Arizona over the last two weeks — the first time without Puig, the second time without Kershaw, both times without Justin Turner.
“It’s easy for me to be optimistic,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said, “because I believe in our players.”
The teams do not play again until Aug. 30. That might be for the best. For the second consecutive night, Arizona’s Steven Souza Jr. took out a Dodgers infielder on a slide, raising eyebrows in the Dodgers dugout.
The Dodgers went ahead for good in the sixth inning, when Kyle Farmer’s sacrifice fly gave them a 2-1 lead. They scored twice more that inning, on consecutive misfires from the Diamondbacks’ Silvino Bracho — a bases-loaded hit batsman, then a wild pitch.
Alex Wood remained winless, after his eighth start this season and his third against the Diamondbacks. His ERA is 3.60 overall and 2.81 against Arizona, so the absence of run support explains the 0-3 mark.
However, so too does the Dodgers’ reluctance to let him make 100 pitches. He was done after five innings on Wednesday, giving up one run on three walks and five hits. He made 94 pitches.
The last time the Dodgers let Wood throw more than 100 pitches: two years ago Thursday. It would be unfair to say their strategy is unsound: He went 16-3 with a 2.72 ERA last season.
This game did not offer an endorsement for the new era of baseball, and its marginalization of situational hitting, and its glorification of the strikeout.
In the second inning, the Diamondbacks had runners on first and third with one out, and the bottom two batters in the lineup due up.
Sacrifice fly? Squeeze bunt with the pitcher? No. Strikeout, strikeout, fly out.
In the third inning, the Diamondbacks loaded the bases with one out. Wood had needed 66 pitches to get seven outs. He had walked two of the previous three batters.
Did Ketel Marte take a pitch or two? Nope. He swung at the first pitch and grounded into an inning-ending double play.
In the fourth inning, the Dodgers loaded the bases with one out. Patrick Corbin had walked the previous two batters.
Cody Bellinger struck out. Austin Barnes struck out too. The Dodgers did score, but only because Corbin threw a wild pitch. The art of putting the ball in play, for a run-scoring out if not for a hit, was not on display here Wednesday.
In the fifth inning, the Dodgers again loaded the bases with one out. But Hernandez hit a shallow fly ball and Matt Kemp grounded out.