Dodgers’ pitching continues to crater in latest loss: ‘Battling with what we got’

LOS ANGELES — Andrew Friedman didn’t sugarcoat it. There was hardly much of a way to. The Los Angeles Dodgers president of baseball operations was succinct in summing up the state of the club’s pitching, which has once again been whittled by injuries.

“Not fun,” Friedman said.

The Dodgers’ two star free-agent starter signings — Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki — are hurt. So is Tyler Glasnow, one of last year’s big prizes. Each of the Dodgers’ top four right-handed relief leverage options — Blake Treinen, Evan Phillips, Michael Kopech and now Kirby Yates — are also among the 14 pitchers who reside on the injured list. Not fun, indeed. Even a club seemingly teeming with pitching depth on paper to start the season is feeling the effects.

The ensuing domino effect has led to ugly results. No team in baseball has asked more out of its relievers than the Dodgers’ 200 2/3 bullpen innings entering Monday. Only the Miami Marlins and Milwaukee Brewers have had fewer outings of at least six innings than the Dodgers’ 11.

After getting hit hard Monday in a 9-5 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Dodgers’ team ERA of 4.28 ranks 22nd in baseball, just behind the woeful Chicago White Sox. An alarming situation looked all the more hideous as boos rained down at Dodger Stadium for the club’s fourth straight loss.

“It’s not the staff we thought we’d have this season,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But I feel that what we still do and have done in the past with injuries, we’re not doing. And I say that in the sense of getting ahead of hitters and keeping them in the ballpark.”

The surface numbers are ugly. The underlying ones are concerning. Only the Baltimore Orioles have seen a higher rate of fly balls leave the ballpark (15.4 percent) than the Dodgers’ 14.4 percent homer-to-fly-ball rate. Though their pitchers are getting the swing-and-miss they expected, it has come at the expense of pitch efficiency — opposing hitters are seeing the seventh-most pitches per plate appearance in the sport. It took depth starter Landon Knack 16 pitches just to get Gabriel Moreno to fly out in the fifth inning of Monday’s contest.

As frustrating as anything to Roberts, he said Monday, is the Dodgers putting themselves behind the eight ball as soon as the plate appearance even begins. The Dodgers entered Monday having thrown a first-pitch strike just 59.8 percent of the time, seventh worst in the majors. That trend is “disconcerting,” Roberts said.

“It doesn’t take a deep dive to see we start 1-and-0 quite often,” Roberts said. “When you do that, it makes pitching tough. So I think we’ve got to start being more efficient, certainly from the starters, to give us an opportunity to get deeper into games. The 30-pitch innings just don’t play. It’s not sustainable. And that starts with getting strike one. That ultimately goes to our entire pitching staff.

“I think there’s a challenge component of it. Everyone wants to get ahead. Everyone wants to pitch well. I understand that. We all understand that. But there’s ways to do that. So I think flagging that — which we have — I expect a difference in that part of the process.”

Not that it mattered Monday. Hyeseong Kim misjudged a ball in center field, and Max Muncy threw away a groundball to help Arizona push three runs across over Jack Dreyer’s two innings to open for Knack. When Knack entered in the third, he allowed five of the first six batters he faced to reach safely. Two of them hit the ball out of the ballpark.

“I was kind of leaving some pitches over the middle, getting into some deep counts,” said Knack, who essentially has slid in as the Dodgers’ temporary fifth starter. “Just not really executing when we needed to. They took advantage of a couple mistakes. They definitely didn’t miss those.”

When Knack finished five innings, it was hardly a silver lining in another ugly night.

Same for a late offensive surge that forced Arizona’s leverage relievers into the game. The Dodgers’ vaunted lineup has found itself constantly trying to climb out of deficits.

“It’s just tough to find a way to get back healthy and get our guys back out there,” said Mookie Betts, who slugged two home runs in the loss. “But we’re battling with what we got.”

Over the first six games of this homestand, the Dodgers trailed in four before they’d even taken an at-bat.

“We got to put up that zero and kind of get a chance to get the game going,” Roberts said.

The Dodgers’ depth hasn’t quite materialized as anticipated. Knack’s ERA is 6.17. Justin Wrobleski and Bobby Miller haven’t impressed. The team’s best young starting option, Ben Casparius, might also be its only real right-handed leverage option at the moment. Emmet Sheehan’s eventual return off the injured list, once seen as a luxury, might be a necessity at this point.

Friedman argued that the club’s run of pitching injuries is not as dire as the one the Dodgers survived en route to the World Series last October. They won despite having three healthy starters, riding a red-hot bullpen while beginning the early stages of an in-house organizational audit of their pitching to find a source for the injuries. Friedman argued that the injuries aren’t as severe — each of the Dodgers’ prominent pitchers to hit the shelf this season is still on track to return at some point. It doesn’t make the present any prettier.

“I said this a lot, and I think anyone who doesn’t say it is not being honest: There’s a lot we don’t know about injury stuff, and I think it’s important not to pretend like we have all the answers,” Friedman said. “There’s a lot to it that is really challenging, and we’re hoping to continue to grow and learn from experiences and just try to make the smartest, best move we can, knowing we’re going to make mistakes.”

The most encouraging thing about the state of the Dodgers’ pitching staff was present hours before first pitch on Monday. Treinen played catch. So did Glasnow. Snell chose Clayton Kershaw as his catch partner as Roberts, general manager Brandon Gomes and assistant pitching coach Connor McGuiness looked on. Though Glasnow is “a tick” ahead of Snell at this point, neither has a set timeline to return, Roberts said.

Shohei Ohtani won’t enter the mix until after the All-Star break despite taking a meaningful step forward in his rehab by ramping up to 50 pitches in bullpen sessions.

None of that will fix the pitching staff in the present. Or keep it healthy.

“Everything from my brain is about what we can do — like how we can solve this,” Friedman said. “It’s like a game of Whack-a-Mole, and things keep popping up, and we’re doing the best we can to hit them down and keep our guys in a good spot to win as many games as we can. It’s a good opportunity for some guys, and then hopefully get some reinforcements back.

“The definition of enough depth,” Friedman said, “I think is a fool’s errand.”

(Top photo of Landon Knack: Harry How / Getty Images)