In Wednesday’s game between the National League West first-place Los Angeles Dodgers and the NL West third-place Arizona Diamondbacks in front of a Dodger Stadium crowd of 47,965, the Dodgers sent eight men to the plate in the bottom of the first inning. Four of them scored on four hits, including back-to-back home runs by 2024 All-Stars Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernández. They also drew one walk and had one strikeout to grab an early 4-1 lead over the Snakes.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that over the next eight innings, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts‘ team sent only 28 men to the plate, of which one doubled, one singled, five walked, and four struck out. In fact, after that promising first inning, the Dodgers had only one runner reach third base (Freeman on a third-inning walk, a passed ball, and a balk), and only two reach second base (Andy Pages on a walk and that same balk, and Miguel Rojas on that aforementioned double in the bottom of the sixth).

“Tonight, we just drew dead tonight after that first inning,” Roberts astutely told reporters postgame.

As for those 12 D-backs runs, four were surrendered by 25-year-old Dodgers right-handed starting pitcher Gaven Stone, including a third-inning solo home run by D-backs catcher Gabriel Moreno on a 95.1-MPH four-seam fastball that was right town the middle, to tie the game at 4-4.

“Honestly, I felt good, just a little off,” Stone said postgame. “You just gotta forget about it. They’re a good team, they put up great at-bats. Really, I just, I mean, I wasn’t executing,” he added.

As Dodgers fans vividly recall, seven days earlier that the popular Lake City AR native and Dodgers fifth-round draft pick in 2020 out of the University of Central Arkansas tossed a stellar nine-inning 4-0 complete game shutout of the Chicago White Sox at Guaranteed Rate Field, doing so on only four hits with seven strikeouts.

“You can’t expect him to be perfect every time out,” Roberts said of Stone’s difficult outing on Wednesday and obviously refering to his near-perfect game on June 26.

With Wednesday’s loss and the San Diego Padres’ 6-4 win over the Texas Rangers, the Dodgers are back to a 7.5-game lead over the second place Friars, with the D-backs in third place 10.5 games back, the San Francisco Giants in fourth place 11.0 games back, and the Colorado Rockies in fifth place a very distant 23.5 games back.

Play Ball!

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