If you are a bottom line person, the bottom line is that the National League West Division Champion Los Angeles Dodgers lost to the NL West fourth-place Arizona Diamondbacks by a score of 6-1 on Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium – period, end of story.

But if you are an eternal optimist who likes to find good in even the worst of situations – and thankfully there are more of those than the other – there were a number of good things that happened in Wednesday’s ugly loss.

The most obvious good thing was Dodgers right fielder Mookie Betts‘ 396-foot solo home run into the Left Field Pavillion in the bottom of the fourth inning to give the Dodgers their only run to avoid being shut out by the team over which they still lead by 33.5 games in the division. It was Betts’ team-leading 35th home run of the season.

Unfortunately, Dodgers right-hander Dustin May was the most obvious bad thing for the Dodgers on Wednesday night. The 25-year-old Justin, TX native and Dodgers third-round draft pick in 2016 out of Northwest High School in Justin, TX allowed five runs on seven hits and lased only four innings in his sixth start of the season.

“They hit the stuff that I threw in the zone,” May said postgame. “I threw a lot of balls and got into bad counts. I set myself up for failure, walking guys and giving up weak contact. It was just overall bad.”

But the other very obvious good thing that occurred on Wednesday night – one that, for the most part, went unnoticed by many – was that the Dodgers bullpen was nothing short of outstanding, allowing only one additional run to the Dbacks in their combined five innings of work in relief of May.

Messrs. Chris Martin, Alex Vesia, Tommy Kahnle, Caleb Ferguson, and Justin Bruihl made only 15, 11, 17, 10, and five pitches in their respective one inning of work.

Asked postgame if he had considered allowing any one of the five to go back out for a second inning, at least to begin the inning, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was very specific in his answer.

“No,” Roberts answered. “In certain situations, potentially, possibly, but I think just recent workload, I’m not going to have a guy potentially go three out of four (consecutive games), and then do an up/down, even though they threw 12 pitches in an inning, because it’s also, the fact that the next day, the next game, the forthcoming day, so. But they were great. Every guy in the pen was really good.”

Although any one of the five most certainly could have gone another – or part of another – inning, it’s hard to argue with Roberts’ logic, with 13 games still remaining in the 2022 regular season.

…clinched division notwithstanding.

Play Ball!

  *  *  *  *  *  *