This should’ve been it.
A storybook ending. A cathartic late-game breakthrough. The kind of dramatic, momentum-shifting triumph to finally give the Dodgers some much-needed life.
In the top of the ninth inning at Angel Stadium on Tuesday night, Shohei Ohtani lifted the team to the verge of a narrative-changing victory, breaking a tie score with the kind of swing that could have catapulted them into the season’s closing stretch.
With former Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen on the mound, and a split crowd in Anaheim rising to its feet, Ohtani blasted a go-ahead home run deep to right field. He flipped his bat and emphatically smacked his hands together. He screamed toward a euphoric Dodgers dugout that was going raucously wild.
So often in recent weeks, the team had been on the other end of scenes like this. Blowing late leads. Squandering comeback chances. And watching their division lead dwindle amid one of the worst extended stretches in the club’s recent history.
Now, at long last, they had their own breakthrough moment.
Three more outs, and their mounting frustrations might finally subside.
“Big hit right there,” manager Dave Roberts said. “Obviously, you felt it in the dugout.”
What the Dodgers felt next, however, might last much longer.
On a night they could have resuscitated their season, they instead found a new way to crumble. In the kind of collapse that has become all too common of late, they let yet another winnable game go meekly by the wayside.
Shohei Ohtani reacts after hitting a go-ahead solo homer in the ninth.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
In the bottom of the ninth, the Dodgers blew their one-run lead after Alex Vesia gave up a leadoff single, a walk and an eventual Nolan Schanuel sacrifice fly.
In the bottom of the 10th, they dropped their fifth-straight game against the Angels this season when Jo Adell sent a high-chopping, three-hopping, walk-off RBI single over the head of drawn-in third baseman Max Muncy.
The final score: Angels 7, Dodgers 6.
The state of the Dodgers’ season: Somehow finding a way to continue to spiral.
“I think you can sense the frustration,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said in a somber postgame clubhouse.
“You look at the standings,” Roberts added, “and we just got to play better baseball.”
Indeed, in the most consequential twist of the Dodgers’ stunning midseason meltdown, the team has seen its once-comfortable lead in the National League West vanish in barely a month.
Entering play on July 4, the Dodgers were nine games clear of the San Diego Padres, and had a 98% likelihood in Fangraphs’ computer models of winning the division for a fourth-straight time.
But since then, the Dodgers have gone 12-20. The Padres, with the help of significant roster upgrades at the trade deadline, are 22-12. And now, with a pair of series between the clubs looming in each of the next two weekends, the teams are tied for first place at 68-52.
“It’s a new season,” Roberts acknowledged postgame.
Teammates swarm Jo Adell after his walk-off hit.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
And the final step in getting there could have hardly wrought any more hurt.
Entering Tuesday, the Angels were scrambling. Projected veteran starter Tyler Anderson was scratched with back tightness. Rookie right-hander Victor Mederos was called up for his MLB debut on just three days’ rest. And in the first inning, the Dodgers took the lead in the span of four at-bats, with Ohtani drawing a walk, Mookie Betts getting hit by a pitch and Teoscar Hernández (fresh off an off day on Monday) opening the scoring with an RBI single to left.
But then, in a predictable turn, the team quickly started to spring leaks.
Max Muncy lined into a double play to end the first, with Hernández getting doubled off at the bag at first. Emmet Sheehan gave up three runs in the bottom of the frame, then two more over the third and fourth innings after Dalton Rushing tied things with a two-run homer in the second. And even though the Dodgers pulled level again with a two-out rally in the fifth, Michael Conforto struck out swinging to leave the bases loaded (dropping him to 3-for-30 since his brief resurgence in July).
“There’s just certain things that you can kind of manage and control, and I don’t think we’re doing a good enough job with that,” Roberts said. “These last three weeks or whatever it’s been, we just haven’t stacked clean, good, solid baseball games together. And once we feel like we do, then we don’t. So I know we’re all frustrated.”
Those frustrations came to a head in the sixth.
Miguel Rojas led off with a pinch-hit single. Rushing followed in the nine-hole with his second hit of the night. And as Ohtani came to the plate, an opportunity arose to get the ship righted.
Instead…
Ohtani hit a line drive to shortstop Zach Neto, who then beat Rojas back to the bag at second, before firing to first where Rushing was caught too far off the bag.
Bing, bang, boom.
One out, then two, then three for a head-spinning, inning-ending, rally-killing triple-play.
“That’s how it’s [been] going,” Roberts quipped. “But again, you got to make your own breaks.”
Instead…
What had been a strong night from the Dodgers’ bullpen — which got scoreless frames from Jack Dreyer, Edgardo Henriquez and Blake Treinen in the sixth, seventh and eighth — came unraveled with Vesia’s blown save in the ninth.
“Tonight was by far one of my worst outings of the year,” said Vesia, who had been the Dodgers’ most dependable reliever this year before allowing runs in each of his last three outings. “Super frustrating. I’m kind of at a loss for words.”
And though Ben Casparius got the game to extras by wiggling out of a bases-loaded threat later in the inning — with the help of a generous strike call on what could have been a walk-off walk — the Dodgers went down quietly in the top of the 10th inning to set up the season’s latest gut punch.
On a night so close to being so celebratory, the team instead suffered another calamity.
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