There is no kind or gentle way to put it so I’ll cut right to the chase – the National League West first place Dodgers got their butts handed to them on Friday night by the National League West second place San Diego Padres at Dodger Stadium … badly.

Like 7-1 badly.

Then again, when your starting pitcher walks five batters, hits two, and gives up six runs on four hits – including two two-run home runs – things rarely end well.

“Tonight it was about the command,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of soon-to-be (on Tuesday) 25-year-old Dodgers right-hander Dustin May, who made his third start of the season since returning from his May 2021 Tommy John surgery. “Certainly the stuff is there, it’s velocity and everything’s hard, but if you’re not commanding it, then guys can time velocity. There were some good breaking balls in there, but there was a lot of misfires with all of his pitches.

“It’s a good lesson, he’s going to see these guys again I think his next turn. So when you’re facing good hitters up and down the lineup, you’ve got to sequence well and you’ve got to command the baseball,” Roberts added.

May did neither.

“Just bad all around, couldn’t throw strikes,” May told reporters postgame. “Everything’s right (health wise), I just couldn’t throw strikes.”

That is a fact. Of his 87 total pitches, only 53 were strikes (60.9%), with two of them ending in two-run home runs.

Then again, when your total offense consists of one run (scored in the bottom of the ninth) on four total hits, the embarrassing loss doesn’t lay entirely on May’s shoulders.

You also have to give credit to 36-year-old Padres right-hander Yu Darvish, who was absolutely brilliant in his 7.0 innings pitched. The Habikino, Japan native and five-time All-Star allowed no runs and only two hits to the best offense in all of baseball.

Rather than beat this (very) dead horse any further, I’ll leave you with these tweets that were posted immediately followed Friday night’s ugly Dodgers loss:

The good news is that the Dodgers still have a 17.0-game lead over the Padres in the NL West with only 31 regular season games remaining, so there’s that.

Play Ball!

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