Walks kill you.

Not the kind you take around the neighborhood or at the park, which are good for you, but the kind you give up during a baseball game, especially during a Major League Baseball game.

On Saturday evening in front of a Dodger Stadium crowd of 50,423, soon-to-be 36-year-old (on June 30) Dodgers right-hander reliever Blake Treinen issued back-to-back-to-back walks to Kansas City Royals first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino, designated hitter Nelson Velázquez, and catcher Freddy Fermin respectively, to load the bases with one out in the top of the sixth inning.

And then, after striking out Royals pinch hitter Adam Frazier on three pitches, and on a 12-pitch at-bat to Royals left fielder MJ Melendez that included seven foul balls, Treinen grooved a 92.6-MPH cutter ‘right down Broadway’ that Melendez sent 395 feet into the Right Field Pavilion for a devastating grand slam home run, turning a 2-1 Dodgers lead into a 5-2 deficit and eventual 7-2 Dodgers loss. It was Melendez’s first career grand slam.

“The biggest thing is just with the walks. I mean, I don’t walk people, and when I walk people, it makes you pay. It doesn’t matter who the hitter is in the league,” Treinen said postgame. “You can live with solo shots, you can live with, you know, a couple knocks, but when you give them free bases, like, it never bodes well. So, it’s a frustrating one from that perspective.”

Walks do indeed kill you.

There is a silver lining to this otherwise dark story. The NL West second-place San Diego Padres, the third-place Arizona Diamondbacks, and the fourth-place San Francisco Giants also lost on Saturday, so there’s that.

Play Ball!

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