LOS ANGELES -- There were two chapters in the Nationals' 13-7 loss to the Dodgers on Sunday at Dodger Stadium.
Chapter 1 covered innings one through five.
It was highlighted by right-hander Michael Soroka recording a career-high 10 strikeouts and holding the Dodgers hitless through 4 2/3 innings.
“Just looking back at my at-bats, the first two at-bats, hats off to the pitcher,” Shohei Ohtani, who struck out twice against Soroka, said via interpreter Will Ireton. “He really pitched well. So I didn’t really have a good rhythm going into it.”
Meanwhile the Nationals jumped out to an early 3-0 lead, with Nathaniel Lowe homering for the third time in less than 24 hours.
“Obviously, things were clicking early,” Soroka said. “We still fell behind a good amount, but we made a lot of good pitches behind in the count. We were making them rush [their] decisions, and we got the changeup in there and we threw that a lot more today which made a big difference. But once we got on a roll, it was clicking and things were rolling.
“Just missed a little bit at the end.”
Chapter 2 is where the plotline began to shift in the sixth inning.
Soroka had only allowed one hit and issued zero walks when he took the mound for the sixth. But it is a frame in which he has struggled with consistency this season, and he entered the game with an 18.00 ERA in that inning.
Soroka loaded the bases with one out off a double to Dalton Rushing, a walk to Ohtani and a Freddie Freeman hit by pitch. Manager Dave Martinez made the call to the bullpen, and Soroka’s afternoon ended at 85 pitches.
“To be honest with you, the sixth is, Rushing kind of filets one down the line, about two feet from being a foul ball,” Soroka said. “I don’t know what it was, it wasn’t all that hard hit. … Then I make a couple good pitches to Ohtani and didn’t get the calls. I made sure he’s not the one to beat me in that situation given the at-bats that I had off Freddie today. Just kind of got excited and cooked a breaking ball, and that was it.
“It’s a tough game. It’s hard to string it all together, and the other side gets a vote, too.”
Soroka was replaced by left-hander Jose A. Ferrer, who asked the grounds crew to flatten the dirt on the mound. In his first at-bat, Ferrer threw a fastball in the zone to Max Muncy. The result was a go-ahead grand slam to left-center field.
“The count was 2-2, so I had to go with a fastball,” Ferrer said via interpreter Mauricio Ortiz. “I couldn’t throw a secondary pitch because we had one out and guys on base.”
From there, the Dodgers became the main characters in the story of the series finale.
“Ferrer comes in, and he’s been good against lefties,” Martinez said. “He just got a ball up there in that situation, and after that, everything unraveled.”
Martinez gave former Dodger Ryan Loutos the ball in the seventh inning of a one-run game to face the bottom of the order. Six batters, no outs and four runs (including an Ohtani bases-clearing triple) later, Cole Henry was tabbed in a five-run deficit. It became an 11-3 hole when Henry surrendered a three-run homer to Muncy, who had seven RBIs on the day.
Jackson Rutledge was on the receiving end of the Dodgers’ last home run push of the day. He gave up a two-run homer to Ohtani which, after an official review overturned the original call, put the Nationals’ in a 10-run hole.
The Nationals’ offense attempted a four-run, ninth-inning rally when the Dodgers turned to their bullpen and position player Kiké Hernández to close out the game. The Nats head to San Diego 1-2 at the start of this three-city West Coast road trip.
“The process is great, but results matter here,” Soroka said. “We’ve got to do better. We’ve got to make better pitches, I’ve got to make pitches so we don’t put those guys in that situation. They’ve worked hard, they’ve thrown a lot of innings for us. It’s baseball sometimes, that’s how it goes.
“I think we’ve got to keep our heads down and keep working, because I think we’re close to being able to turn it around and go on a run opposite of what just happened with that string of losses.”