- Tyler Glasnow was scratched from Friday’s start against Baltimore with back tightness, prompting Shohei Ohtani to step in on short notice.
- Ohtani volunteered to pitch despite having his own Wednesday start scratched because of illness.
- Ohtani pitched well, but the Dodgers struggled to score and their losing streak reached four games.
BALTIMORE — In one corner of the room, Tanner Scott stared blankly into his locker, trying to come to grips with yet another game he let get away.
Across from him, Dalton Rushing propped a pair of crutches under his arms, limping out of sight with the Dodgers’ latest injury.
On the opposite wall, Freddie Freeman got dressed at his stall; taking in the somber scene in the visiting clubhouse at Camden Yards, while trying to think of exactly what to say about the team’s troubling, tumbling, torturous current play.
“Sometimes, you just don’t have the right answers,” Freeman said, as reporters gathered around for a familiar line of questions. “Not going to sit here and give some cliches. We’re just not playing very good. … There’s no sugarcoating this. We need to figure this out, and figure this out quick.”
Indeed, just when the Dodgers’ second-half slump seemed like it couldn’t get any worse, Friday delivered a new set of headaches.
Scheduled starting pitcher Tyler Glasnow was scratched in the afternoon with back tightness, forcing Shohei Ohtani to pitch on just five hours’ notice.
Rushing exited early after fouling a ball painfully off his right shin, leaving the Dodgers without both their starting backstop (Will Smith remains sidelined with a bone bruise on his hand) or his backup (X-rays on Rushing’s leg were negative, but he will also need a CT scan) for at least the next few days.
And then, of course, there was the game: A 2-1 walk-off loss to the last-place Baltimore Orioles that sent the slumping Dodgers to a fourth-straight defeat.
“We can sit here after every game and talk about what we need to do,” Freeman said. “It’s just, we got to do it.”
Friday went off the rails before the Dodgers (78-63) even arrived at the ballpark, starting with a flurry of phone calls to figure out their pitching.
After the team’s late arrival from Pittsburgh the night before, Glasnow reported some bad news to the team’s training staff: His back tightened up on the short flight to Baltimore. And a night of sleep hadn’t resolved the issue.
Suddenly, Dodgers coaches, staffers and front-office officials in Baltimore and back in Los Angeles began what pitching coach Mark Prior described as a “game of telephone” — trying to figure out what to do about Glasnow, and who could pitch if he was unable.
“There was a lot of moving parts,” Prior quipped.
Ultimately, the team decided to scratch Glasnow, opting for a cautious approach to what they hope is only a minor issue. According to manager Dave Roberts, the tentative plan is to slot Glasnow back into the rotation early next week. But given his injury history, questions will linger until he’s actually back on the hill.
In the meantime, the team had to decide who to send to the mound on Friday. At around 2 p.m., the request went to Ohtani — who had been scratched from his own scheduled pitching start Wednesday in Pittsburgh while battling an illness, but had improved enough to oblige the short-notice request.
“It’s gonna be OK,” Freeman joked as he followed Ohtani into the visiting clubhouse at Camden Yards a few hours later. “The unicorn is here.”
Ohtani did his part in what was an abbreviated outing by design, delivering 3⅔ scoreless innings with five strikeouts and three hits allowed.
But, in their latest dispiriting performance, the Dodgers couldn’t make it matter, going silent at the plate again before suffering yet another late-game meltdown.
“I know each day the guys come in fresh, prepared and expecting a different result,” Roberts said. “But we’re just not getting it done.”
Offensively, the Dodgers struggled to generate chances, or capitalize upon the few they did. Baltimore starter Dean Kremer retired his first eight batters, including first-inning fly balls from Mookie Betts and Freeman that died at the wall. When the Dodgers did create opportunities in the third (getting two aboard with two outs) and the fourth (loading the bases with two outs) they came up empty; continuing an inexplicable slide in which they’ve ranked 27th in the majors in scoring over their last 53 games.
“We individually are trying to find ways on our own to … [be] hitting better than we are,” Ohtani, who managed only a walk in four trips to the plate, said through interpreter Will Ireton. “But I think the side effect of that is, we’re a little too eager, and putting too much pressure on ourselves. That’s really hurting us more than it’s helping.”
On the mound, meanwhile, Ohtani managed to post zeros, navigating the Orioles (65-76) with a fastball that touched 101.5 mph and a varied mix that helped induce 12 swing-and-misses.
But as soon as he exited — pulled after 70 pitches given the rushed leadup to his start — the Dodgers quickly fell behind on a glaring defensive lapse.
In the fifth, the Orioles drew a pair of walks. Then, with lead runner Jackson Holliday breaking for third, a sweeper in the dirt got past Rushing — the fifth wild pitch he allowed in the last two games filling in for Smith.
Holliday turned for home as Rushing scrambled to the backstop. By the time Rushing threw to the plate, Holliday was already sliding in safely for the first run of the game.
The Dodgers’ deficit didn’t last for long. On the first pitch of the sixth, Freeman whacked another fly ball that carried deep enough to get out this time, his 19th home run of the season tying the score 1-1.
But then, more frustration followed — with the Dodgers leaving two runners stranded later in that inning, when Rushing was forced to exit with his injury; then another in the seventh, when Freeman grounded out following a two-out double from Betts.
“Not scoring runs, it’s just not who we are,” Freeman said. “We’re not getting anything going. We’re not getting the hits.”
“We haven’t for a while,” he added. “I truly have no answers.”
Neither, it appears, does Scott, the already embattled closer who suffered his latest calamity in the ninth.
After getting the first two outs, the left-hander made the same kind of mistake that has haunted him all season, leaving a 1-and-2 fastball right down the middle to Samuel Basallo that the Orioles catcher clobbered for a no-doubt, winning blast deep to right-center field.
“I just keep making terrible pitch selections right when it matters, and it’s costing us every time,” said Scott, who has a 4.52 ERA and 11 combined blown saves and charged losses. “It sucks. It feels terrible. And I have to figure it out. Because baseball hates me right now.”
Lately, it hasn’t been more relenting on the Dodgers as a whole, either — dealing them painful losses and crippling injuries amid a continued search for any shred of improved play.
“We all are confident in who we are as baseball players. We’re just not doing it right now in the field,” Freeman said, as the gloomy postgame clubhouse surrounding him reflected the anguished state of the team. “The game of baseball’s really hard, but the concept is easy. We’re making the concept really hard right now.”
