LOS ANGELES — The Orioles’ loss to the Dodgers on Wednesday night was the result of two problems: one familiar, and the other only recently developed — but perhaps more concerning.
Baltimore’s defense recorded three errors and Corbin Burnes’ sudden August struggles continued as Los Angeles pulled away for a 6-4 victory to even the midweek series.
Though the Orioles’ lineup provided some early offense, scoring at least four runs for only the fourth time in their past 11 games, Shohei Ohtani starred on his bobblehead night in front of a sold-out crowd of 53,290 at Dodger Stadium with two hits, including a home run, two stolen bases and three runs scored to lead a swift Los Angeles comeback. His first-inning blast, which came on Burnes’ fifth pitch of the evening, was his 42nd of the year as he pursues the first 50-homer, 50-stolen base season in MLB history.
“It’s a good lineup,” Burnes said. “You can’t make mistakes. Really, the one mistake in the first inning to Ohtani and then the one to Teoscar [Hernández] in that inning was about it. For the most part, we kept the ball down, weak contact. None of their other hits were real hard. Do what I can to just manage the contact and keep the ball on the ground, and we did that for the most part. Yeah, it’s a tough lineup, and you’ve got to make pitches.”
Five of the runs the Dodgers pushed across the plate were unearned as Gunnar Henderson, Ramón Urías and James McCann all allowed costly free bases with defensive miscues. Urías misplayed a ground ball to third base in the third inning, helping jump-start a four-run frame for the Dodgers that was capped off by a three-run homer by Hernández.
Two innings later, McCann conceded an extra 90 feet to Ohtani when he bobbled a throw behind the plate and Henderson’s team-leading 20th error of the season on the next play allowed the star slugger to score. It marked the third time this year the Orioles (77-57) have recorded three errors in a game.
“You’re going to make errors, and we made a couple errors tonight that led to some runs, but had some opportunities to get out of it, too,” manager Brandon Hyde said.
“They gave us a couple runs there early also. I thought we had some good [at-bats] early, didn’t do much from the middle of the game on offensively. But yeah, wasn’t our cleanest game.”
The final pitching line might technically indicate Burnes’ 20th quality start of the season, but he allowed two home runs and four stolen bases to contribute his share toward the club’s run-prevention woes.
Heading into August, the star right-hander had a sparkling 2.47 ERA. He was in the hunt for the American League Cy Young Award, and the Orioles had won 10 of his previous 13 starts. Five starts later, his 28 runs allowed in August are the most of any calendar month in his MLB career and his 21 earned runs are tied for his career high with March/April 2019. Despite the string of poor results, Burnes was confident there weren’t any consistent problems between them.
“I think it was a step in the right direction,” Burnes said. “We threw the ball pretty well. Cutter command was better again today and got it down in the zone, and I think we took a positive step there with some swing-and-miss and some weak contact. That inning, obviously, stuff got away from us a little bit, threw some extra pitches and made a mistake up in the zone and he didn’t miss. So really, the two pitches on the home run balls tonight are kind of what changed that game. But yeah, for the most part, I thought I threw the ball pretty well.”
Burnes has also allowed a stolen base on 37 of 41 attempts this season, but he doesn’t plan to make holding runners a larger part of his focus when on the mound.
“The mistakes we’re making are just bad pitches up in the zone,” Burnes said. “Tonight, it was a backup slider and a backup curveball, so it wasn’t necessarily good pitches they went down and got. Last couple outings, when I’ve been making good pitches, we’ve been getting weak contact. Sometimes they’re going for hits, but I think it’s just me getting back to what I do best, and keeping the ball down and giving up weak contact is going to continue to yield the results we want.
“Baseball, you have some times where the ball just finds a hole.”
The Orioles stayed within striking distance of a victory thanks to the red-hot bat of Urías, who recorded a two-run double in the third, and an RBI single by McCann in the second. Urías has driven in 17 runs this month, one shy of his career high for a month set in July 2022.
Ryan O’Hearn tacked on another with an RBI double in the fifth to help chase Dodgers start Walker Buehler early, but the Orioles’ offense stalled from there as Los Angeles’ bullpen allowed two hits over 4 1/3 scoreless innings to close out the game.
“Offensively, we’re kind of up and down offensively,” Hyde said. “It would be nice to kind of get going offensively to help some things out. Urías picked us up with a big double, another big hit for us early. We’ve got to rattle some more consistent at-bats together throughout the game.”
Orioles at Dodgers
Thursday, 10:10 p.m.
TV: MASN
Radio: 97.9 FM, 101.5 FM, 1090 AM