Dodgers lose 7th straight as Diamondbacks rally against Edwin Diaz

PHOENIX — Whatever pressure the Dodgers might be feeling from their season-high losing streak, it is a dry heat.

Andy Pages’ leadoff home run in the eighth inning capped a comeback for the Dodgers and gave them a one-run lead, but closer Edwin Diaz gave up a two-run, walk-off homer to Ryan Waldschmidt as the Arizona Diamondbacks handed them a 4-3 defeat on Friday night at Chase Field.

The Dodgers have now lost their past seven games. They haven’t had a longer losing streak since September 2017.

“A loss is a loss, but to get walked off never feels good,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “We didn’t play a clean game, a great game on either side of the baseball, but we did enough to put ourselves in a position to win a game, and unfortunately, we couldn’t finish it.”

The Dodgers haven’t played many clean games for the past month.

The Diamondbacks arrived in Los Angeles for a three-game series against the Dodgers starting on July 10. They were a .500 team (47-47), barely visible 14½ games behind the Dodgers in the National League West.

They swept the Dodgers that weekend and have gone 16-8 since then – better than all but two MLB teams in that time (the Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves) – and shaved seven games off the Dodgers’ lead while moving into position for one of the National League’s wild-card playoff spots.

The Dodgers, on the other hand, are 8-14 since the start of that series.

They were in position to end this losing streak after Pages’ home run despite being held hitless for five innings by Diamondbacks starter Merrill Kelly and surviving a bases-loaded situation in the bottom of the eighth inning. Tanner Scott escaped by winning a 12-pitch battle with Nolan Arenado. Nine of those pitches were sliders, the final one getting past Arenado.

Diaz’s slider was not as effective. An essential part of Diaz’s two-pitch arsenal, he hung one to Waldschmidt and the rookie outfielder crushed it, sending it 411 feet into the left-field seats to end the game.

“I think the fastball was great today. Just I missed the slider right in the middle,” Diaz said. “So I gotta find a way to throw my slider better, execute better pitches, and if I do that, it will be better.

“I think I was trying to be perfect with the pitch. I’m just missing right in the middle and it paid off (for Waldschmidt). I gotta be better with that. I’m a big-league pitcher, so I gotta make pitches. So next time when I come into the game, I gotta do better.”

Diaz is a big-league pitcher who didn’t pitch in the big leagues for three months while recovering from surgery to remove loose bodies from his elbow. In his first four appearances since returning, Diaz has allowed runs in three of them. He has faced 17 batters and given up six hits (including two home runs) and walked three (including the leadoff batter in the ninth on Friday).

“I think that’s about right,” Roberts said of Diaz’s self-assessment. “I thought the fastball was good. I thought the fastball life was good, but the slider just isn’t having much effect. And he left one close to Waldschmidt, and he hit a homer.

“He just hasn’t had the feel for that pitch since he got back. But the fastball seems to be getting better, command of it, the life of it. But the slider is something that – you’ve got to have something go left and get swing and miss with that pitch, too.”

Roberts put Diaz into a save situation in his first game back from the injured list then gave him a couple of outings in non-save situations – easy to do when you’re on a seven-game losing streak. But Diaz has returned as the closer and that is not likely to change now.

“I think honestly, you also have to look at the options, and see the way some of these guys are throwing. They’re not throwing great either,” Roberts said. “So we have to keep guys in their roles that they’ve earned, and trying to ‘lane’ guys up and try to get them on a run back the way we were a few weeks ago. So I just don’t think right now there’s a clear-cut alternative.”

There seemed to be a clear-cut path to ending their winning streak when Diamondbacks right-hander Merrill Kelly took the mound. Going into Friday’s start, Kelly was 0-11 with a 5.56 ERA in 17 career starts against the Dodgers. The Dodgers had hit a robust .321 with 16 home runs in those regular-season meetings.

But Kelly shape-shifted into a different pitcher on Friday. He held the Dodgers hitless for five innings, retiring 11 of the first 13 Dodgers he faced, walking two (both with two outs in the inning). One of those walks was Shohei Ohtani in the third inning, and he was thrown out trying to steal second base.

Ohtani waved his hands demonstratively, indicating he thought he was safe and wanted a replay review. The Dodgers did not challenge and Ohtani had run into an out on the bases for the fifth time since the All-Star break.

“I only go by what our people look at. The angle wasn’t there to warrant using a challenge right there,” Roberts said.

The Dodgers couldn’t score against Kelly even when they hit a ball over the fence. Tommy Edman led off the third with a drive to right field that a leaping Corbin Carroll reached over the fence and caught, stealing a home run from Edman.

Dodgers starter Roki Sasaki turned in a quality start, holding the Diamondbacks to two runs on four hits in six innings. The Dodgers matched that with single runs in the sixth and seventh and Pages gave them a lead when he led off the eighth inning and crushed a first-pitch cutter from lefty reliever Brandyn Garcia 425 feet into the left-field seats. It was just Pages’ second home run in his past 21 games.

The lead survived Scott giving up a two-out double to Gabriel Moreno then walking the next two batters (one intentionally) to load the bases for Arenado. Even that gave Roberts reason to worry about his bullpen – Scott’s fastball velocity was down for the third consecutive outing.

“He got out of it,” Roberts said. “Nolan put together a really good at-bat, he got him with the slider. But tonight the velocity was down. … It took him 25 pitches to get through it. But (he made a) big pitch against Arenado to get through it.”

Diaz couldn’t escape his troubles in the ninth inning. He walked the first batter he faced, struck out Tim Tawa but hung his 2-and-2 slider to Waldschmidt.