Tyler Glasnow struggles in rain as Dodgers drop | College News

PHILADELPHIA — On a windy, moist and dreary afternoon at Citizens Bank Park on Sunday, the Dodgers twice watched a lead slip frustratingly from their grasp.

It first occurred in the third inning, when a regular drizzle, slippery ball and muddy mound prompted Tyler Glasnow to return unglued in a six-run implosion.

It occurred again in the seventh, when the Dodgers stormed back in entrance with 5 unanswered runs solely to let a sloppy inning of protection value them their first collection defeat of the season.

Such had been the lapses that determined the Philadelphia Phillies’ 8-7 win in Sunday’s collection rubber match; reminding a Dodgers group that gained eight straight video games to start out the season that they’re additionally succesful of beating themselves.

“Two evenly matched teams, good series,” supervisor Dave Roberts mentioned. “We just didn’t do some fundamental things well today.”

The Dodgers’ issues started virtually as quickly as the rain did, derailing what had been a promising begin from Glasnow.

Over his first two innings, the veteran right-hander was cruising by means of his second begin of his second Dodgers season, seemingly choosing up the place he left off after his scoreless five-inning season debut the week earlier than.

He stranded a stroll in the primary. He labored round a single in the second. And when he took the mound for the third, he was working with a two-run cushion, because of an opposite-field first-inning blast from Teoscar Hernández — the primary of two home runs he hit in a five-RBI efficiency.

At the beginning of the third, nonetheless, a regular drizzle had begun to descend from low overcast clouds.

And within moments, the affect it had on Glasnow grew to become abundantly clear.

First, Glasnow started kicking mud from his cleats between virtually each pitch. Then, he repeatedly dried his hand by wiping it on his pants and tried to get a grip with repeated grabs of the rosin bag.

At one level, pitching coach Mark Prior got here out for a go to alongside a coach, making certain that Glasnow wasn’t battling any bodily limitations past the rain-soaked mound.

None of the remedies, nonetheless, may get the pitcher back into a rhythm. Glasnow walked the primary three batters he confronted in the inning. And as the stress mounted, he failed to seek out a solution to settle himself back down.

“Once I had a couple poorly gripped balls, I think I lost my aggression and rhythm,” Glasnow mentioned, wishing he “could have just eliminated the thought a little bit more about the mound and the conditions, and just tried to get out of my head.”

“I think I just lost some feel and then that kind of compounded into a bad inning,” he added. “I was just thinking about other stuff.”

Granted, pitching in such situations has been a rarity in Glasnow’s profession. Over the final eight years, sunny Dodger Stadium and Tampa Bay’s domed Tropicana Field have been his home stadiums.

But, Glasnow famous, “there’s not really any excuses. I just kind of have to go out and find a way to execute next time.”

In settlement, Roberts added: “He just couldn’t reset and regroup to kind of slow the game down, and it just went sideways on us.”

Indeed, after an RBI bloop single and run-scoring wild pitch tied the rating, Roberts changed Glasnow with left-handed reliever Alex Vesia — who promptly surrendered a grand slam on his first pitch to Nick Castellanos.

In all, Dodgers pitchers issued 11 walks in what was simply their worst efficiency of the younger season. The Phillies, who received a 5⅔ innings of four-run ball from left-handed starter Cristopher Sánchez, yielded solely two.

“The weather, it’s a factor, but every pitcher that took the mound today had to deal with it,” Roberts mentioned. “You’ve still got to find a way to reset and try to minimize some damage and put the ball in play. But we just couldn’t do that today.”

Despite being down 6-2 at that time, the Dodgers didn’t go away quietly.

Hernández virtually single-handedly dragged them back within placing distance, launching one other opposite-field home run off the right-field foul pole in the fourth inning earlier than lining an RBI double inside the third-base bag in the fifth.

“I was trying to get a little bit more space between home plate and the batter’s box, just so I can get more space to get the sinker,” Hernández mentioned, noting his three-hit recreation was aided by an adjustment he made to his stance in preparation for going through Sánchez.

“I got some [pitches] out over the plate,” Hernández added, “and I was just ready for it.”

It helped set the stage for the Dodgers’ three-run go-ahead rally in the seventh.

Mookie Betts had the important thing hit that inning, belting an RBI double to heart. Hernández hit a sacrifice fly that tied the rating, giving him his fifth RBI on the day (one shy of his profession high) and thirteenth of the season (second-most in the National League).

Then, Will Smith narrowly missed a two-run home run by solely a few toes off the highest of the right-field wall, settling as a substitute for an RBI double that pushed the Dodgers in entrance 7-6.

However, the Phillies (7-2) responded in the following half-inning. And as soon as again, the Dodgers did themselves no favors.

The inning started when Andy Pages misinterpret a 107-mph missile from Bryce Harper in the outfield, taking a few steps into the left-center subject hole earlier than retreating too late and letting the ball recover from his head.

Blake Treinen then gave up a stroll and score-tying RBI single, earlier than Edmundo Sosa outraced a bouncing throw to first base from Tommy Edman that negated a potential inning-ending double-play and allowed the go-ahead run to attain with two outs.

“We kept competing and gave ourselves a chance to win,” Roberts mentioned. “But yeah, we put ourselves behind the eight ball today.”

As a end result, the Dodgers dropped a winnable collection towards a rival World Series contender — failing to beat their own self-inflicted errors, as properly as their host’s usually sloppy early-April climate.