Washington’s James Wood, right, steals second base in front of Dodgers second baseman Miguel Rojas during the Dodgers’ 6-4 loss Monday. (Nick Wass / Associated Press)
Defensive miscues cost the Dodgers two runs on Monday. Stellar defense from the Washington Nationals prevented two more.
In the Dodgers’ 6-4 loss at Nationals Park to open a three-game series, that proved to be the difference. And, with the team having now lost three of their last four games, it reinforced what is fast becoming a disconcerting early-season theme.
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As was the story in this past weekend’s series defeat to the Philadelphia Phillies, when defensive breakdowns and baserunning blunders ended the team’s 8-0 start to the season, the Dodgers continued to struggle with the fundamentals on Monday, digging an early hole from which they never fully recovered — even on a night Shohei Ohtani came up a double short of the cycle.
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With two on and one out in the top of the second, Mookie Betts let a hard-hit one-hopper blaze by him at shortstop, getting charged with an error that allowed an unearned run to score. With two outs, Miguel Rojas booted a more routine grounder at second base, resulting in yet another error and unearned run.
The Nationals’ defense, on the other hand, twice took away hits that doused potentially dangerous Dodgers rallies.
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In the top of the third, Max Muncy was robbed of extra bases on a diving catch in right field by Alex Call — just three batters before Ohtani whacked a two-run homer that otherwise would have scored three.
In the fifth, Rojas was denied a hit when shortstop Paul DeJong made a diving stop deep in the hole — just two batters before Ohtani laced a triple that would have brought him home, but instead was wasted in a scoreless inning.
Opposing teams’ defense, of course, is out of the Dodgers’ control.
But their own repeated mistakes have emerged as a growing source of frustration in this campaign’s opening weeks.
Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani hits a triple during the fifth inning Monday against the Nationals. (Nick Wass / Associated Press)
The Dodgers (9-3) have committed seven errors, all within the last six games. They have yielded 10 unearned runs, most in the majors. They have even struggled to slow the running game, giving up steals on all 12 attempts by their opponents so far, including three to the Nationals (4-6) on Monday.
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Some of this was to be expected. Betts is still re-acclimating to shortstop after his three-month cameo there last year. A primary outfield alignment of Michael Conforto, Teoscar Hernández and Andy Pages (who got a day off Monday amid his season-opening slump, even with left-handed MacKenzie Gore on the mound) is not exactly a full-proof defensive unit.
Generally, this year’s Dodgers’ lineup was built with offense as the primary consideration, as well; helping them rank top-five in scoring, and second in home runs, even though they’ve been without Freddie Freeman (who remains on the injured list with an ankle injury) for all but three games.
But on Monday, their bats couldn’t bail them out. They managed just two runs over six innings against Gore, who racked up seven strikeouts while giving up five hits. They scored twice in the eighth, but stranded the potential tying runs when Kiké Hernández struck out to end the inning. Then, in the ninth, they couldn’t do anything with a leadoff double from Muncy, even with Nationals closer Kyle Finnegan going for a five-out save on his third straight day of pitching.
To make matters worse, their lone moment of defensive excellence — when Tommy Edman threw out a runner at home in the seventh — came in an inning the Nationals scored three other times off relievers Anthony Banda and Matt Sauer, turning a one-run lead into a four-run advantage that largely felt of the Dodgers’ own making.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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