OAKLAND — It’s not pretty – the crumbling infrastructure, empty spaces and focus on a future with more resources that can only get better.
That’s not just the soon-to-be-abandoned Oakland Coliseum and its one-foot-out-the-door occupants. It is also starting to apply to the Dodgers.
Getting by with spare parts and leftovers while an assortment of All-Stars and key players occupy the injured list is not going very well for them lately. They managed fewer hits (two) than the Oakland A’s had home runs (three) in the first six innings on Friday night, closed late on a three-run home run by Shohei Ohtani but lost, 6-5, to the woebegone but surging A’s.
The loss was the Dodgers’ third in a row and sixth in their past eight games. It marked them as a .500 team (30-30) over their past 60 games, a stretch when they have spent treading water with a lineup and rotation depleted by injury.
Teoscar Hernandez’s two-run home run in the first inning gave the Dodgers an early lead. But the next 15 Dodgers went down in order against A’s starter Joey Estes. By the time they had another baserunner – on back-to-back two-out walks of Will Smith and Gavin Lux in the sixth inning – the A’s had chased Gavin Stone from the game and built their lead.
Stone allowed two baserunners each in the first and third innings but things fell apart in the fourth and fifth when five of the final eight batters he faced reached base.
It started with solo home runs by Shea Langeliers and Seth Brown in the fourth inning that tied the score. Stone walked leadoff man Lawrence Butler to start the fifth inning, gave up a triple to Miguel Andujar and a double to J.J. Bleday.
Stone was lifted for Joe Kelly, who gave up Oakland’s third home run of the game, a two-run shot by Brent Rooker.
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So reliable for the first three months of the season, Stone has regressed since the end of June. In his past five starts, he has a 7.15 ERA, giving up four runs or more in four of the five starts. Opposing batters have hit .375 against him in those starts with seven home runs.
The Dodgers finally got their third hit of the game when Amed Rosario made his return, doubling down the left field line as a pinch-hitter to start the seventh inning. A walk and a hit batter loaded the bases with two outs for Ohtani but he bounced harmlessly to first base, extending a week-long hitless streak to 19 plate appearances.
That ended with two outs in the ninth when Ohtani lined a three-run home run into the right field seats, making it a one-run game before the A’s closed it out.
More to come on this story.
