LOS ANGELES — Freddie Freeman is not wrong.
“We just didn’t play good tonight .That was just not a good game,” Freeman said accurately after a 9-4 loss to the New York Mets on Friday night. “If we just play better baseball, we’re going to win. Our team is way too good. I think we all know that and I think we’re going to be just fine soon.”
In the meantime, they look far from fine. The defense cost them runs against the Mets. The bullpen continues to be unreliable. The starting pitching has been spotty. And the offense is not living up to the hype — including Freeman who is beating himself up over a 2-for-22 slump (including 0 for 5 with three strikeouts Friday).
The result is losses in four of their past five games and five of their past seven after Francisco Lindor’s two-run home run broke a seventh-inning tie and opened the door for the Mets to score five times in the last three innings.
The Dodgers were outhit 14-6 by a Mets team that has won five in a row and six of its past seven.
“I think when you lose four out of five and play the way we’ve played, it’s a combo. It really is,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “It’s hard to pick one thing. I think each game you look at, it could be the starting pitcher, it could be the ‘pen, it could be offensively we’re not putting up enough runs.
“Tonight was kind of a microcosm of what we’ve been through. All facets, we could’ve been better. I think about a week ago I said we’ve only played about three games of a complete game. I think we’re still there. So we’ve got to put together a complete game as a team. … The nice thing about tomorrow is it’s a day game we don’t have to wear this loss much longer.”
They had better sleep fast then.
The Mets bolted out to a 4-0 lead against Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto on Friday.
The Dodgers’ $325 million man has a 4.50 ERA after five starts and has looked like the dominant starter he came advertised as for only occasional single innings.
Yamamoto did solve one problem. Seven of the eight runs and eight of the 13 hits he allowed in his first four starts came in the first inning – most of those in South Korea, where he didn’t pitch beyond the first inning.
This time, he retired the Mets in order in the first inning, striking out two, and needed just nine pitches to do it.
Trouble was stuck in traffic and arrived late. Yamamoto gave up a home run to D.J. Stewart in the second inning. An error by catcher Will Smith on a dribbler in front of the plate extended the inning long enough for Harrison Bader to drive in a second run with an RBI single.
Yamamoto walked the leadoff batter in the third and gave up a double to Starling Marte. Pete Alonso drove in one run with a single and another scored on a sacrifice fly to make it a 4-0 Mets getaway.
Six of the Mets’ seven hits off Yamamoto came after he had two strikes on the batter.
“When he’s going well, I think like any pitcher, he’s getting ahead in the count. He’s sequencing his pitch mix,” Roberts said. “He’s a four-pitch guy so when he’s going well, he’s getting ahead and he’s putting hitters away. I think there was that at-bat where he had count leverage on (Harrison) Bader and he left a fastball out over. He had a chance to go for the strikeout right there and didn’t execute a pitch to put him away.
“Those are little things, the fine-tuning that when you get count leverage with guys in scoring position, you’ve got to be able to put them away. Kind of goes back with the fastball command. But this certainly isn’t on him. We’ve got to do stuff as a team offensively, too.”
Shut out by the Washington Nationals on Wednesday, the Dodgers’ offense took its time getting started on Friday.
Shohei Ohtani walked to lead off the fourth inning, stole second and scored on a two-out RBI single by Teoscar Hernandez, ending a stretch of 12 scoreless innings for the Dodgers.
In the fifth, Andy Pages led off with a double and scored on Ohtani’s two-out RBI single – raising his average with runners in scoring position to .100 (2 for 20).
In the sixth, the Dodgers tied the score when two errors by third baseman Joey Wendle helped load the bases with two outs for Chris Taylor. Taylor came into the game 1 for 35 this season with a stretch of 30 hitless at-bats.
He made that 0 for 31 when he hit into a double play in the third inning. But that ground ball came off his bat at 100 mph. His two-run single in the sixth came off his bat at 104.7 mph and tied the score.
“Just felt good to do something to help the team, honestly,” said Taylor who finished the day 2 for 38 this season. “It’s no secret I’ve been grinding a little bit. Just trying to keep things as simple as I possibly can. Look for something in the middle of the plate. Just glad I was able to come through finally.”
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The feel-good moment didn’t last.
Yamamoto made it through six innings for the first time in his MLB career. Daniel Hudson took over in the seventh and struck out Brandon Nimmo to start the inning. Mookie Betts handled a chopper by Marte but his throw to first was in the dirt and wide, pulling Freeman off the bag.
“When you’re not playing really good baseball, things like that seem to always get you,” Roberts said. “That’s kind of what’s happening right now.”
Hudson got ahead 0-and-2 to the next batter, Lindor. But Lindor fought back to a full count and slammed a hanging slider from Hudson into the right field pavilion.
The Mets added two more runs in the eighth inning off an ineffective Joe Kelly, whose ERA swelled to 7.27. Ryan Brasier’s sits at an even 5.00 after he gave up another run on three hits in the ninth.
