The half-empty Dodger clubhouse was so quiet you could hear a winning streak snap Monday. But amid the silence there was one conversation that spoke volumes.
After a 4-3 walk-off loss to the last-place Colorado Rockies — a loss set up by two poor plays from right fielder Teoscar Hernández — Mookie Betts met with manager Dave Roberts and Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations, in Roberts’ office.
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Betts, the Dodgers’ shortstop, is a six-time Gold Glove winner in right field. Hernández is not. On Monday, Hernández threw to the wrong base in the third inning, allowing the Rockies to score their second run, and in the ninth he was unable to hold Ezequiel Tovar’s bloop double. Two pitches later, Warming Bernabel bounced a single up to middle, scoring Tovar to end the game.
The Betts conversation afterward was private. But the circumstances that led to it were not. Clearly the bullpen is not the Dodgers’ only problem.
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“He’s got to get better out there. There’s just no [other] way to put it,” Roberts said of Hernández. “It’s not a lack of effort. But, you know, we’ve just got to kind of get better. We do.”
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One way to do that is to move Betts back to right field, where he won six Gold Gloves in seven seasons, and use Alex Freeland or Miguel Rojas at shortstop. Freeland played nearly 300 games at shortstop in the minors while Rojas has played more than 940 games there in the majors.
“We should have won that game,” Roberts said. “This is a hard one.”
Hernández is second on the team with 74 RBIs and is tied for second with 20 home runs, so the Dodgers (71-54) need his offense in the lineup. But his defense — especially his range, which is at a premium in big parks such as Coors Field — has increasingly become a source of frustration for Roberts.
It was that and more Monday.
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After a sacrifice fly from Dalton Rushing and a line-drive single from Shohei Ohtani staked the Dodgers to a 2-0 lead in the second, Hernández helped give it back in the third. With Kyle Karros on first after a walk, Brenton Doyle singled to right and continued to second when Hernández, who got a terrible jump on the ball, threw to third in an unsuccessful attempt to get Karros rather than going to second and keeping Doyle at first.
Mookie Betts reacts after striking out in the seventh inning against the Colorado Rockies on Monday. (Justin Edmonds / Getty Images)
When Ryan Ritter followed with a single, both runners scored.
“I don’t know if you would have had a play on that one. I know it shouldn’t have been second and third,” Roberts said. “So that base hit scores two right there.”
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The Dodgers went back in front in the sixth when Freddie Freeman drew a leadoff walk, stole second and scored on Freeland’s two-out pinch-hit double. But Tovar matched that in the seventh with a one-out solo homer, his seventh of the season.
Tovar’s next at-bat came with one out in the ninth and he lifted a high fly into shallow right field, between Freeland, going out from second, and Hernández lumbering a long way in from right. Hernández, who did not dive, appeared to have the ball in his glove for a moment but couldn’t hold it. And when it tumbled out, Tovar was at second.
“It was one of those where you had to make a play. I didn’t,” said Hernández, who was playing deep in a no-doubles defense.
“I [got] to the ball, I get the ball, but it came out of my glove.“
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And when Bernabel followed with a single, the Dodgers’ three-game winning streak overall and their 10-game winning streak against the Rockies (36-89) were over. They also failed to add to their division lead over the San Diego Padres, who they will meet again this weekend.
For Roberts, more painful was the fact the loss came against the worst team in the majors after Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave the Dodgers seven strong innings while Colorado had to go to the bullpen in the fifth after starter Kyle Freeland left with a blister on his pitching hand.
“We get a starter that goes seven innings, their starter goes four innings and we don’t win this game,” Roberts said. “That’s a hard one to put into words.”
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Sending Betts to right and moving Hernández’s bat to left in place of Michael Conforto (who is hitting .190) might be one way to voice his displeasure.
“Defense is a big part of postseason baseball and winning baseball,” Roberts conceded. “He’s just got to continue to get better.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
