Back in the spring, when asked about his early impressions, it didn’t ease my expectations.
“,” the Dodgers manager said of the club. “The batsman’s box fears about him are certainly real.”
However, recently, the only real murder Scott has done remains the Dodgers’ chance.
And on Monday night, he and his team suffered from another fatal example.
Rather than overwhelm the batters with the MPH heater in the 90s and clean up with the evil power slider, Scott fell victim to a familiar pattern for losing his second decision of the season (to go with five blown saves on 15 occasions):
He missed the spot with his fastball. He brought hard contacts without generating enough swings and mistakes. And that fear Roberts was expected back in the spring, being erupted through the fanbase nervously to see the pitch, and existed in one place.
“I missed out on a place in the zone, especially against batsmen who I was supposed to be in different places,” Scott said of his struggle. “I’m just not bumping into my place and it costs us.”
Scott’s latest failure wasted a strong six-inning two-run start from the pitcher and a two-game heroic from the slugger, which made costs particularly stiff on Monday.
“We do a good job of being resilient,” Roberts said.
However, after that, Scott was summoned from the bullpen, and everything lay down.
He got a center-cut fastball to lead the innings and hit an RBI double over his head on the field on the right. He picked him at the next batting point and swayed aggressively with a 2-0 fastball in the middle and on his lap.
“Yeah, it’s been hit a lot,” Scott said when asked when he was asked that he believes his signature fastball is playing. “I smoke now. Last year I relied a lot on it. This year, it’s been hit and I don’t have a place.”
In fact, the Dodgers’ bullpen top-paid member has the highest earning average for the units, with Scott’s balloons at 4.73 after Monday’s defeat. His final two weeks have been particularly cruel, with two decisions, three blown saves and 12 runs (10) all coming in his final six innings.
“I think we just missed the place with Tanner,” Roberts said. “It’s good that I’m talking to my eyes and the guys on our pitching (please tell me) and it’s not just a command.
Since the start of the season, Roberts has been wary of tagging Scott with the team’s formula more closely. And he reiterated on Monday that “no one is dedicated.”
Again, Scott has 10 saves for the team. And given the team’s banged rescue teams (Blake Trainen, Michael Kopeck and Kirby Yates) lacking Evan Phillips for the rest of the season, Scott was bequeathed to most of his ninth job.
When asked if it could move forward, Roberts’ answer was not entirely clear.
“We need to choose a matchup, who is playing baseball well, who believes, who can manage the situation,” Roberts said. “There’s no one special right now. I think it showed that you’re using different people in leverage, finish games, etc.”
For a while, the Dodgers (36-24) didn’t seem to need such a slow game calculation despite a productive start from May.
After giving up a leadoff home run to Francisco Linder first, the right-hander settled in the ditch and began with Juan Soto’s double play late in the inning. He smacked Brett Butty to finish the fourth with a corner runner before rolling off the mound. And the Mets (38-22) scored again in the fifth place with Brandon Nimo’s RBI double, but May jumped out to Pete Alonso, facing yet another threat, to limit the damage.
Six innings in May have important personal meaning and helped me set career-best workloads on single-season workloads by eating up the 60 innings threshold for the first time in my six-year injury career.
“I feel like I’m in an OK place,” May said. “There’s definitely room for growth, but at this point it’s the biggest thing for me. I’m healthy. I feel healthy. There’s no pain… I just have to keep building it.”
The Dodgers were scoreless in five innings by his counterpart, veteran right-hander Pete Blackburn (who had made his season debut after fighting injuries), but Otani pushed him back into the game on the seventh day with a 424-foot mammoth home run. His 23rd longest ball of the season leading MLB runs all the way past the bullpen on the right field for the Mets.
Ninth, the Dodgers completed their comeback. He hit a leadoff single and stole it second. The script was written for the infield single, which moved Edman to the third. After that, Otani came. Otani skied a deep fly ball to the left and made a united sacrifice fly.
However, after Scott’s super inning blunder, another two-run deficit turned out to be too much to overcome.
He led the bottom of the 10th with a walk (to go with two hits early in the evening), and Andy Page was obtained within one on the RBI single. But then I launched it. Will Smith got a pinch hit at the final moments – literally emerged from a dugout where Comfort was already digging into the plate, but flew to the center. And Edman then cornered the night when the Dodgers were stranded with 11 men on base, with the runners in the scoring position.
“Losses are losses,” Roberts said. “But when you feel like you’ve done enough to win late in the game and then don’t leave it, it’s a little more stabbing.”
The pain wasn’t even more serious to anyone but Scott. Instead of helping the bullpen survive the rash of his famous injury, his struggle effectively left the Dodgers dead again.
“It happened so much,” Scott said. “It’s frustrating, especially when we went back and fought and it wasn’t going my way.”
