The upcoming month was already going to be tough for the Dodgers.
A rainy Friday night in Queens made it that much tougher.
In the fourth game of a 29-game stretch against playoff-contending teams, the Dodgers beat the New York Mets in a marathon contest at Citi Field, overcoming a three-run ninth-inning blown save from closer Tanner Scott by prevailing 7-5 in the 13th inning.
But, their already shorthanded pitching staff endured more unexpected obstacles in the process. A one-hour, 38-minute rain delay in the top of the third limited starting pitcher Clayton Kershaw to just two innings. A seemingly never-ending game forced their overworked bullpen to combine for 11 more innings in which every reliever was used except one.
“Obviously, it’s not the way we envisioned it,” manager Dave Roberts said. “But found a way to persevere.”
“The Mets had to do the same thing and they lost,” Kershaw added. “That doesn’t feel near as good.”
Navigating this difficult portion of the schedule — which began in earnest with a three-game series against the Arizona Diamondbacks this week — was already posing a test for a Dodgers pitching staff missing three of its five opening-day rotation members and many other important arms in the bullpen.
Because of that, Roberts has emphasized in recent days the need to push his starters to take down as many innings as possible.
On Friday, however, the weather didn’t cooperate.
In his second start after offseason toe and knee surgeries, Kershaw seemed to be on his way to a decent start. Over two scoreless innings, he yielded only a lone walk that was quickly erased by a double play. Just 26 pitches in, he felt like he “could find some consistency, some repetition” in his delivery.
Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw delivers in the second inning Friday against the Mets. (Pamela Smith / Associated Press)
“More reps the better for me right now,” he said. “Just trying to get back into it.”
Instead, with the Dodgers mounting a rally in the top of the third, the New York skies opened up for a late May downpour. For the next 98 minutes, fans scattered for shelter and watched the Knicks’ playoff game on the stadium scoreboard. Back in the visiting clubhouse, Roberts watched the clock tick and tick and tick, eventually to the point where keeping Kershaw in was no longer a viable option.
“I tried to stay as loose as I could, but it just kept going longer,” Kershaw said. “In hindsight, they probably should have waited to start the game for a while. Tough to have our bullpen end up covering 10 innings.”
It would have been less, if not for Scott’s fourth blown save in 14 opportunities and second in the last four days; this one coming with the Dodgers ahead 5-2 following three innings of two-run ball from Matt Sauer and three scoreless innings from Ben Casparius.
Starling Marte led off the ninth with a single. Pete Alonso drew a one-out walk. Jeff McNeil got them both home on a triple hit just high enough to evade a leaping Freddie Freeman at first base. Tyrone Taylor then completed Scott’s fourth blown save in 14 opportunities with an RBI single to left.
“I didn’t even think about it like that,” Scott said when asked if he was impacted by pitching for a third time in four days. “I just wish I would have located better and got guys out.”
Somehow, the Dodgers (32-19) still managed to prevail.
Alex Vesia got the game to extras, denying the Mets (30-21) a regulation walk-off by stranding two runners to end the ninth. Both teams wasted opportunities from there, failing to score their automatic runners in the 10th (when the Dodgers had the bases loaded with no outs), the 11th (when Anthony Banda and Luis García combined to escape a bases-loaded threat) and the 12th (when the Dodgers turned an inning-ending double play while employing a five-man infield).
“Just a grindy game,” said third baseman Max Muncy, who was in the middle of some controversy earlier in the night when third base umpire Tripp Gibson ruled he had intentionally stepped into Marte’s line of sight on a potential sacrifice fly, awarding a run to the Mets baserunner on what had been an outfield assist from Hernández on a perfect throw to the plate.
“Really good for the guys to not give up, keep battling,” Muncy added, “and come through in the end.”
Indeed, in the 13th, the Dodgers finally broke through, with Teoscar Hernández hitting a leadoff RBI double before scoring on Andy Pages’ sacrifice fly.
García closed it out, completing his 2 ⅓ scoreless innings just minutes shy of 1 a.m. local time.
And while the result will certainly come at the future expense of a pitching staff already running on fumes, Roberts took solace in the way his other six relievers battled, relieved that any bigger-picture complications coming out of Friday at least weren’t squandered in what would have been a crushing late-night loss.
“There was some usage certainly that we’re going to talk through as far as protecting some downside in the next handful of days,” Roberts said of his overworked bullpen, which was already leading the majors in innings pitched entering the night.
“But,” he added, “there was a lot of good things from our ‘pen today. Certainly from Luis and Banda right there, and obviously Caspy continues to be good. So there’s a lot of good things.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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