ROCKIES’ LOSING STREAK STRETCHES TO FIVE
DODGERS 12, ROCKIES 6 Losing streak grows to five as Dodgers pull off series sweep
The strange abounded at Dodger Stadium on a sunny Sunday afternoon. The yips, the bloops, a five-hole boot. And then it got wild.
During the Dodgers’ 12-6 gut-punch victory over the Rockies, wild pitches scored the first run and the last, and Colorado slipped again in the nuttiest, ugliest loss of a worrisome five-game skid.
Adam Ottavino’s slider to the backstop in the seventh inning scored two runs, as Tony Wolters spun around in the dark of his catcher’s helmet looking for a wayward baseball, and the Dodgers took a lead they did not abandon. The Rockies (47-31) are lost, now looking up through a 4½-game deficit at the National League West-leading Dodgers (51-26).
Ottavino threw a club record-tying four wild pitches, accounting for three runs in the seventh inning and two runs in eighth. He allowed a total of six earned runs — on three hits, including Cody Bellinger’s two-run homer — and recorded only three outs.
“You can call it what you want. It was pathetic,” Ottavino said. “I have to do better.”
But as the red-hot Dodgers won their 10th consecutive game, the Rockies’ pain radiated further. Just five days ago, the Rockies held the top spot in their division, the latest calendar date in club history for a claim on first place.
Now, the Rockies are dealing with another injured pitcher — Tyler Anderson suffered a left hamstring cramp, leading to his exit in the third inning Sunday. Colorado’s weary bullpen was forced to use veteran closer Greg Holland just to escape the eighth inning.
Ottavino, who allowed just one run and two hits in his previous four appearances, fell apart in a marathon outing. He threw 48 pitches, as manager Bud Black called on him to prop up the bullpen.
“I would have pitched until my arm fell off,” Ottavino said.
Oddly, Ottavino’s career-worst day hinged on a fringe pitch. He entered the seventh with two outs and quickly drew a full count against Dodgers catcher Austin Barnes. He threw a fastball on the outside of the plate and took a step off the mound, thinking it was the third strike.
“In the moment,” Ottavino said, “I thought it was a strike. But nobody is telling me that it is. Nobody is really talking to me. I mean, he called it a ball, so it’s a ball.”
Barnes instead walked and the inning devolved. “From there, it sort of unraveled,” Black said.
Way back in the second inning, Dodgers starter Brandon McCarthy threw three wild pitches to score Mark Reynolds from first base. McCarthy suffered something approaching the yips. But manager Dave Roberts was forced to keep McCarthy on the mound because the Dodgers are short- handed due to injuries. In the third inning, Reynolds and Tapia knocked in two more runs as the Rockies built a 5-0 lead.
McCarthy’s three wild pitches were outdone by Ottavino’s four. And a lifetime elapsed before the game’s final pitch.
“He helped us, no doubt,” Black said of McCarthy. “And then we helped them on the back end.”
Bellinger’s two-run homer off Ottavino in the eighth — he also homered off Anderson in the third — gave the Dodgers an 11-6 lead and ignited chants of “M-V-P” from the crowd at Dodger Stadium. Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen doubled off Holland for another run. It was only Jansen’s third hit in eight years.
“Games like this happen. They’re painful when you’re on this end of it,” Black said. “As ugly as it got in the end, this is good for us to see where we are and how we bounce back, especially on the mound.”