The Los Angeles Dodgers‘ offense continued its hot-and-cold May on Monday in San Diego.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts credited San Diego Padres starter Michael King and lamented their club’s inability to score in LA’s 1-0 loss Monday at Petco Park.
The Dodgers (29-19) fell into second place in the National League West, a half-game behind the Padres. San Diego also snapped LA’s five-game winning streak, in which the Dodgers scored 40 runs — they had 31 runs in their three-game sweep of the rival Los Angeles Angels over the weekend.
The Dodgers are second in the majors in runs scored (248) behind only the Atlanta Braves. But they fell to 5-7 in one-run games, and their .416 win% in such games is the second-worst in the National League, ahead of only the New York Mets, and are just 9-8 in May.
The Dodgers Offense Couldn’t Solve Michael King
The good news Monday was Shohei Ohtani stayed hot by posting two hits and improving to 10 for 20 in his past five games.
The bad news was the Dodgers offense couldn’t figure out King otherwise. The veteran righty threw 100 pitches over seven scoreless innings while striking out nine and allowing only four hits and two walks.
“At sea level, his ball does a lot of good things. It’s always moving,” Roberts said. “We just really couldn’t put anything together.”
King allowed one run or fewer for the third straight outing, and he improved to 3-0 with a 2.15 ERA in six career outings and four starts. LA went 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position and had two players cut down on the bases, when Mookie Betts and Ohtani were caught stealing in the first and fourth innings.
Jason Adam and Mason Miller added scoreless innings, with Miller pitching around a pair of walks to Freddie Freeman and Kyle Tucker to lock down his major-league-leading 15th save.
“I felt good that we got a couple of guys on base,” Roberts said. “A guy like that, he’s the best in the game, and you know that if you don’t get him there’s swing and miss in there. There’s soft contact. So he was able to reset.”
The Dodgers Squandered Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s Best Start in a Month
King both flummoxed the Dodgers and outpitched ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto in his best outing in about a month.
The Japanese right-hander struck out eight and only allowed three hits in seven innings. But he also surrendered a first-inning solo homer to Miguel Andujar, which accounted for the only run of the game.
Still, Yamamoto left his recent relatively rough stretch in the rearview mirror by completing only his second quality start in his past four outings.
“The last few haven’t been great for his standards,” Roberts said. “But tonight I thought was a really good one.”
Yamamoto allowed a season-high five runs in their 6-2 loss to the rival San Francisco Giants on May 12. He then gave up a scalding line out to Fernando Tatis Jr. then Andujar’s 376-foot home run in the game’s first two batters before retiring 17 of the final 20 Padres hitters he faced.
“It was good to see him get back after that kind of shaky first inning and pitch the way he did,” Roberts said.
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