It’s a knee-jerk reaction to put the blame for Wednesday night’s painful 3-2 Dodgers loss to the Giants on third base umpire Fieldin Culbreth, but the cold hard truth is that it wasn’t his fault. Oh sure, Culbreth was clearly not looking where he should have been thereby completely missing the substantial contact between Giants pinch-runner Gregor Blanco and third base coach Roberto Kelly, but the real blame for the loss falls squarely on the shoulders of the Dodgers themselves.

There is zero doubt that Gregor Blanco ran into third base coach Roberto Kelly, but there is also zero doubt that third base umpire Fieldin Culbreth wasn’t looking where he was supposed to be looking either. (Video capture courtesy of SportsNet LA)

Although it’s hard to argue that Culbreth’s missed call (as opposed to a blown call) might have very well changed the way that the game ended, the real culprit can be summed up in three capital letters – L O B – as in Left On Base.

With the Dodgers facing one of the toughest pitchers in the game in Madison Bumgarner, everyone pretty much knew that scoring opportunities were going to be hard to come by, but when you are 0 for 4 with runners in scoring position and you strand nine runners on base against a likely Cy Young candidate, your chances of winning drop exponentially.

Ironically, one of the guys who failed miserably when it came to stranding runners on base was the very guy that the Dodgers called up earlier in the day specifically for this game in order to stack the Dodgers line-up with right-handed bats – Chris Heisey. Heisey went 0 for 2 with a strikeout and a walk in his Dodgers debut, leaving runners at first and second in the top of the sixth inning. But Heisey wasn’t the only guy to strand runners on base; Adrian Gonzalez, Yasiel Puig and Howie Kendrick also left two runners on base to end an inning.

With 148 games remaining, now is certainly not the time to panic about two consecutive losses – especially with the Dodgers still in first place in the NL West over the San Diego Padres – albeit by mere percentage points. But it brings to mind the age-old saying that always comes up at the time of year – “You can’t win a championship in April but you can certainly lose one.”