Dodgers’ record unbeaten start ends as they seek to play better baseball

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PHILADELPHIA — The Los Angeles Dodgers finally got caught. Caught with an early deficit they couldn’t overcome. Caught amid a historic start that has come with the team not quite firing on all cylinders. Caught in the wind, which knocked down two fly balls that could’ve left the ballpark. Caught on the basepaths, as they were three times as they finally fell 3-2 to the Philadelphia Phillies on Friday night.

So went the Dodgers’ unbeaten start, which ended in front of a raucous crowd at Citizens Bank Park with a replay review ruling that pinch runner Chris Taylor was caught trying to steal second base while representing the tying run.

No defending World Series champion in baseball history had ever won their first eight games to start the season as the Dodgers had done, even as Los Angeles largely did not play its best baseball. Six of those victories required overcoming a deficit. They kept it alive despite giving away five unearned runs two nights ago. They raised the difficulty level and had won anyway before the Phillies became the first team to grab a lead and hold it.

“We’ve gotten away with it some games early,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But this is something that we’ve got to get better at.”

This time, the difference was having only 24 outs to work with at the plate rather than 27 due to their flubs on the bases.

“When you give a good team outs and shorten the game, then it’s hard to win,” Roberts said.

The margins are slimmer against a team like the Phillies. So it mattered when, in the first inning, Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto went to look Trea Turner back to second base. Turner broke for third. As third baseman Miguel Rojas went to cover the bag, Yamamoto threw behind him.

“That was very regrettable,” Yamamoto said through interpreter Yoshihiro Sonoda. “It was a very fundamental play.”

Turner scored the lone, unearned run, over six masterful innings for Yamamoto.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed just one unearned run against the Phillies. (Bill Streicher / Imagn Images)

That was one more than Jesús Luzardo would allow for the Phillies on Friday. The left-hander, acquired over the offseason from the Miami Marlins, has given the Phillies a rotation as potent as just about any team in the sport, including the Dodgers. He touched 99 mph on his fastball in the first inning and kept a still Freddie Freeman-less Dodgers lineup largely at bay with a wide array of sliders, sweepers and changeups.

And when the Dodgers did generate chances, they didn’t get a boost from the elements — or help themselves.

Shohei Ohtani stood upright in the batter’s box and admired his work amid the nervous silence. He’d squared up a fastball, and he knew it. Until he didn’t. Since the start of the 2023 season, 25 different balls have been hit at least 110 mph off the bat with a launch angle of 32 degrees, as Ohtani’s was in the third inning Friday night. All but one left the ballpark.

Ohtani’s ball got smacked down by the wind and into Phillies center fielder Brandon Marsh’s glove, just a few feet in front of the warning track.

“Even if there’s a strong wind blowing like that, it should be a homer 100 percent of the time,” Tommy Edman said.

An inning later, Teoscar Hernández golfed a slider into the night. Rather than go a few rows into the seats, it fell harmlessly into Max Kepler’s glove on the warning track in left.

“I thought Shohei’s ball, on any normal night, would’ve been a homer,” Roberts said. “I thought Teo’s ball, any normal night, would’ve been a homer.”

Instead, Hernández’s leadoff single in the second inning would be the Dodgers’ only base runner until Andy Pages drew a sixth-inning walk. When Luzardo went to look Pages back to the base with two outs, Pages instead broke for second, getting picked off after hitting the brakes halfway to the bag. The 24-year-old Pages’ base-running woes have emerged as a troubling theme for much of his brief time in the majors, and this time cost the Dodgers a chance for Mookie Betts to hit with runners on.

“This one, you go and you stop — you just can’t,” Roberts said. “We’ve got to eliminate those outs on the bases.”

Two innings later, the Dodgers seemed to spark something familiar against the Phillies’ bullpen. Miguel Rojas grounded a single. Ohtani scalded one of his own with two outs. When Ohtani looked to swipe second, J.T. Realmuto cut him down with a near-perfect throw. Again, Betts was at the plate.

“The Ohtani one surprised me a little bit,” Realmuto said, “because Mookie was hitting.”

After an Edman two-run homer brought the Dodgers to within a run against Phillies closer Jordan Romano, Taylor tried his own luck. As Max Muncy waved through strike three on an elevated fastball, Realmuto popped up from his crouch and rifled Taylor down.

Both Ohtani and Taylor went on their own, Roberts said. Discarding free outs and giving away free base runners is “something that we have to clean up,” he added. It’s not a concern, but something the manager would like to nip in the bud.

The Dodgers, 8-1, have hardly played their best baseball. So it goes for baseball’s last team to record a loss.

(Top photo of Shohei Ohtani reacting after being tagged out at second base: Emilee Chinn / Getty Images)

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