Sunday’s 6-4 loss to the National League West-leading San Francisco Giants at Oracle Park was a tough pill for Dodger fans to swallow. After all, they had their ace and 2021 National League Cy Young Award hopeful Walker Buehler on the mound who, to be brutally (and unfairly) honest, Dodger fans expected to win; this despite the fact that he was facing the best team in all of baseball in their home ballpark.

As he so often does, the 27-year-old Lexington, KY native and Dodgers first-round draft pick in 2015 out of Vanderbilt University, fell on his sword by (unjustifiably) shouldered the loss.

“Not a whole lot of it was very good,” Buehler said. “Probably the worst I’ve thrown in a long time. And we’ll get back to the drawing board and improve, but it was a tough day for me today.”

“They were just on him tonight,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of Buehler’s 28th start of the season. “I think that there were some missed locations, there was some tough luck, and also some quality contact. So, there just wasn’t a lot of swing-and-miss stuff. You gotta give credit when credit’s due, and they took good at-bats against him.”

A fair assessment.

But the simple truth is that even though Buehler wasn’t at his best when he absolutely positively needed to be, his teammates absolutely positively let him down, going a collective 1-for-7 (.143) with runners in scoring position while stranding nine men on base … nine.

“We did a good job of building innings and just couldn’t finish it,” Roberts said. “We let those guys off the hook. They found a way to prevent runs and win the series. It’s baseball, and we have to regroup.”

The crushing blow on Sunday was the Dodgers’ 6-for-34 (.176) trainwreck offense, including former Silver Slugger and 2019 National League’s Most Valuable Player Cody Bellinger, who went 0-for-3 on the day and saw his season batting average drop to an Oklahoma City-worthy .167.

With one out and runners on first and second representing the (then) go-ahead runs in the top of the second inning and Buehler on-deck, Bellinger struck out for the 84th time this season – fifth-most on the team in only 78 games played. The 26-year-old Scottsdale, AZ native and Dodgers fourth-round draft pick in 2013 out of Hamilton High School in Chandler, AZ, now owns a team-second-worst 27.90% strikeout rate (behind only Chris Taylor‘s 28.39%), after having missed 59 games for a hairline fracture in his left leg, and more recently, left hamstring tightness.

“I mean, we have a month left. This was a big game, a Sunday night game, and tied in the division and all that,” Buehler summarized. “But what it boils down to is playing a better month of baseball than they do, and that’s our goal and my goal. So, I think that’s what we need to do.”

Another fair assessment.

Play Ball!

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