NEW YORK — Before Sunday’s game at Citi Field, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts ended his session with the media by saying, his “trust tree has gotten big,’ sprouting more high-leverage options than he has had in his bullpen in recent years.
A couple of those limbs snapped under the Dodgers later in the afternoon.
Relievers Evan Phillips and Will Klein each surrendered a three-run home run as the New York Mets erased a Dodgers lead and handed them an 8-3 defeat Sunday afternoon.
“I like what these guys have done, as far as the body of work,” Roberts said after the game. “But the reality is that Klein is trying to find his way again, I think Evan, I think I’ve got to give him some different situations. So I think that’s where it’s at. And today, Jack (Dreyer), I had a great lane, and he just can’t walk two guys in an inning.”
Two walks preceded each of the home runs by Tyrone Taylor and Marcus Semien and kept the Dodgers from completing a season sweep of the only team in baseball with a higher payroll than theirs – $357.6 million to $322.4 million by one estimate. The Dodgers finished their East Coast residency with six wins in the nine games.
“It’s a long trip, a lot of moving pieces, variables going on, losing off days,” said Freddie Freeman, one of the Dodgers for whom the trip was a full two weeks thanks to the All-Star Game. “I thought we played really good baseball all road trip. I am looking forward to going home.”
The Dodgers had dominated the Mets through their first five meetings, outscoring them 22-8 and holding the Mets’ hitters to a .143 average.
It was Emmet Sheehan’s turn Sunday to freeze the Mets’ assets.
Sheehan didn’t start out well. He gave up hits to the first three Mets batters – a double and two singles – to push across a run. That was all Sheehan allowed.
He retired 15 of the 17 batters he faced after that. He walked two but didn’t allow another hit in his five innings, striking out five. But Roberts pulled Sheehan after those five innings and 87 pitches, leaving four innings for the Dodgers’ bullpen to cover.
The Dodgers’ offense didn’t build enough of a lead thanks to a 2-for-13 afternoon with runners in scoring position.
They did score twice in the third inning on doubles by Eliezer Alfonzo Jr. (the second of his career) and Freeman (the 574th of his), a walk and a run-scoring ground out. A Mets error led to an unearned run in the fourth. But 12 Dodgers went down in order after that. By the time the Dodgers had another baserunner (loading the bases but not scoring in the eighth), the Mets had pulled away.
Dreyer was the first reliever called on to protect the Dodgers’ 3-1 lead. He walked two of the three batters he faced, setting the stage for Taylor’s three-run home run off Phillips to give the Mets the lead.
Phillips has pitched 6 ⅔ innings over seven appearances since returning from Tommy John surgery. He has given up four home runs in that time.
“A couple of them have just been bad pitches. A couple have been poor pitch decisions,” Phillips said. “I chalked today’s up to a guy just put a good swing on a good pitch. I thought I executed well to a spot we had open for him. He just put a swing on it that put it over the fence. It would be nice if some of these barrels would be base hits or doubles, but they’re going over the fence right now.
“Physically I feel great. If anything, it’s just trying to stay on top of the scouting and matchup side of things and understand what I’m trying to do in certain spots. But I feel really, really close to being pretty dang good.”
In the seventh inning, Klein combined the worst of both Dreyer and Phillips. He walked two batters and gave up an infield single. One run scored on a passed ball, then Klein gave up his three-run home run to Semien.
Like Phillips, Klein has had some issues recently. He has allowed 10 runs in his last five innings (though three were unearned).
“I just feel like when you’re in a groove, you don’t think about it a little bit. And then when you fall out of it, it’s hard to sometimes find where you were,” Klein said. “So (I’m) trying to like work back to it. But obviously, it’s just been a little bit all over the place, and I think sometimes you start thinking about that a little bit. I think that leads to more balls, more walks, kind of seeing a little bit of a tumble.”
With Sunday’s inning, Klein has walked seven batters in his last five innings – no way to live in the high-leverage situations Roberts has given him.
“That’s what it is,” Roberts said of the command issues. “It’s probably a delivery thing, but there’s just some bad misses, the working behind, and so, yeah, I think that (I’ve) just got to try to find spots to give him some traction as well. But yeah, I mean, his last, you know, three, four, five outings just hasn’t been consistent. “
Klein said he thinks he has lost “the feel going down the mound” that he had when he was pitching with confidence and more aggression.
“When it doesn’t go where I want it to, it’s like I’m trying to feel what it was like when I was really getting down the mound, really throwing it. I mean, just lift and go,” he said. “So, when you’re not feeling that, you start thinking a little bit. … It turned back into, ‘Please just throw a strike,’ instead of when I was going really well, it’s just, ‘I’m going to challenge you right here, and you’re not going to hit it.’
“I think I just need to do a better job getting back to that and finding where I was a month ago.”