August 31st, 2019 at 8:00 am 
by Ron Cervenka It is the first thing, absolutely positively the very first thing that a pitcher learns in Little League: You do not – and cannot – feign or fake a pickoff throw to first base. Second base or third base? Absolutely. But first base? Absolutely not. If you do, it is a balk. Period.
On Friday night in front of an impressive Chase Field crowd of 34,149 (and countless millions more watching on television), 24-year-old Dodgers right-hander Yimi Garcia violated Little League pitching rule number one, and the best team in baseball – the National League West first-place Los Angeles Dodgers – lost because of it.
“No,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts answered in a single word when asked by SportsNet LA’s Alanna Rizzo if he had ever seen that before at baseball’s highest level. “It was an unconventional way to lose a baseball game,” he had said moments before.
To be fair, at least as fair as one can be in this situation, it was the Moca, Dominican Republic native’s first-ever career balk, so there’s that.
But regardless, Garcia’s eighth-inning balk with one out and former Dodger Tim Locastro standing on third base cost the Dodgers the eventual 5-4 contest and kept their Magic Number to win their seventh consecutive NL West division title at seven.
(Video capture courtesy of SportsNet LA)
Although a postgame calm, cool and collected Dave Roberts showed no visible sign of anger or disgust with the unorthodox way in which his team lost to the NL West second-place Arizona Diamondbacks (albeit by 18 games), it was rather clear that he wasn’t pleased with Garcia when it happened.
(Video capture courtesy of SportsNet LA)
The unfortunate victim in Friday night’s debacle was 25-year-old Dodgers right-hander Tony Gonsolin who, although he clearly ran out of gas in the bottom of the 6th inning, most certainly pitched well enough to – and deserved to – win.
In his 5.0-plus innings of work, the Vacaville, CA native and Dodgers ninth-round draft pick in 2016 out of St. Mary’s College in Moraga, CA allowed only two runs on three hits while walking three and striking out five.
“I thought he was good. I thought he was really good, actually, and deserved better; gave us a chance to win a baseball game,” Roberts said of Gonsolin. “And I think that sixth inning where, you know, we have seven guys in the ‘pen and Joe [Kelly] is down, so you’re looking at … [Caleb] Ferguson down, so you’re trying to get as much out of the game out of Tony as you can.
“Unfortunately, he gave up that walk to [Josh] Rojas and then [Eduardo] Escobar hits the homer, but we still have the lead and Petey [Pedro Baez] did a nice job getting out of that sixth inning,” he added.
“We had some opportunities to tack on situationally a couple and we didn’t cash in and so it could have been a different game,” Roberts summarized. “But you gotta give credit to those guys, they kept chipping away and found a way to win.”
Actually, the Dodgers found a way to lose.
…“an unconventional way.”
Play Ball!
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Well, the magic number is still 9. It doesn’t matter how you lose, a loss is still a loss. They have to put it behind them and hope this sudden momentum (and sort of good luck streak) that the D’backs are on will come to an end.
The Dodgers are playing like crap.They’re very lucky the National League West is extremely weak as well as 90% of the National League. They have to stop worrying about Cy Young and MVP awards and concentrate on the ultimate prize a World Series Championship for LA.
Roberts’ blaming a lack of bullpen arms is lame. After Gonsolin’s 5th inning and being only a rookie I thought he would not pitch the 6th. After the first batter walked I definitively felt Gonsolin was done. I was yelling at Roberts to remove him. Nope, not Roberts.