Parade of pitchers not a merry-go-round for Dodgers
ARLINGTON, TEXAS » More was not merrier for Los Angeles Dodgers pitchers.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts went with an opener against the team that invented the concept, sending Tony Gonsolin to start Game 2 of the World Series against the Tampa Bay Rays as the first of seven pitchers — one shy of the record for a nine-inning Series game.
By the end of the Dodgers’ 6- 4 defeat Wednesday night, which evened the Series at one game apiece, it appeared the Dodgers are down to essentially a twoman rotation of Walker Buehler and Clayton Kershaw.
Coming off games on seven straight days against Atlanta in the NL Championship Series under this year’s unique postseason schedule, with just Monday’s offday, Roberts felt he had no rested alternative.
“We didn’t have anybody that was on regular,” he explained.
Seems like a throwback to the Boston Braves of Spahn and Sain and pray for rain, as Gerald V. Hern of the Boston Post poetically memorialized the pitching tandem of Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain in 1948.
Of the 125 innings pitched by the Dodgers in the postseason, Buehler is 1- 0 with a 1.89 ERA in 19 innings and Kershaw is 3-1 with a 2.88 ERA in 25 innings, a combined a 2.45 ERA . The rest of
the staff is 6-3 with a 4.11 ERA.
Gonsolin lasted just four outs, struggling with his slider and leaving with a 1- 0 deficit after allowing a home run to his second batter, Brandon Lowe.
Dylan Floro (four outs) and Victor Gonzalez (three outs) followed with scoreless ball, but the Rays built a 5- 0 lead off DustinMay, who gave up Joey Wendle’s two-run double in the fourth and Lowe’s two-run homer on an 0-2 curveball in the fifth. Joe Kelly allowed Wendle’s sacrifice fly in the sixth.
AlexWood (six outs) and JakeMcGee (three) finished with shutout relief, but the damage yielded by the earlier parade of pitchers was too much to overcome.
Gonsolin has a 9.82 postseason ERA, allowing eight runs in 7 1/3 innings, and May a 5.00 ERA, giving up five runs in nine innings. “I still trust them. I still believe them, and they’ve just got to make pitches,” Roberts said. “They’re still going to need to get big outs for us.”
Gonsolin didn’t pitch between Sept. 26 and Oct. 13, when he started against Atlanta and gave up five runs over 4 1/3 innings in the 8-7 Game 2 loss. He followed May in the second inning of Game 7 on Sunday and allowed a pair of runs, a homer run to his first batter, Dansby
Swanson, and an RBI single to Austin Riley.
“I want the ball. I want to go out there and give our team a chance to win every time I go out and pitch,” he said. “It’s been a learning experience for me to do new things, starting or whatever and throwing within three days or whatever. ... I can definitely take trying to maintain my sharpness in between outings, not trying to have all my stuff show up on day five or whenever my start day is.”