PHILADELPHIA -- Teoscar Hernández was a welcome break in the clouds for his team on a drizzly afternoon at Citizens Bank Park. But the respite he provided was fleeting, as the Dodgers narrowly dropped their first series of the season with an 8-7 loss to the Phillies on Sunday.
Hern¨¢ndez drove in five runs, one shy of his single-game career high. He opened the scoring with a two-run blast in the first, then was the first to chip away after the Phillies' six-run third inning with a solo shot in the fourth. It was his first multihomer game since last June 8 vs. the Yankees.
"I can¡¯t say enough about Teo," manager Dave Roberts said. "He just doesn¡¯t let any type of performance -- whether it¡¯s a game or an at-bat previously -- affect the game or the at-bat following. Today, he pretty much single-handedly kept us in this one."
There were gray skies over the series finale, both literally and figuratively, before the Dodgers had even taken the field. The team announced that Blake Snell was headed to the 15-day injured list with left shoulder inflammation (retroactive to Thursday) not long before first pitch, creating uncertainty for the pitching plans in the coming days.
Once a light drizzle started to fall in the third, starter Tyler Glasnow looked like a completely different pitcher than in his first two innings. He seemed clearly unhappy with the state of the mound, repeatedly going to clean off his spikes. And his command disappeared, as he faced five batters without recording an out.
"We kind of picked up that he was getting flustered, maybe after the first three pitches of the inning," Phillies right fielder Nick Castellanos said. "I think we did a great job of just letting him kind of fight against himself."
It didn't take long for the Dodgers' early lead to evaporate. Glasnow walked his first three batters of the third before Bryce Harper dunked a single into shallow left-center to drive one in, then a wild pitch brought in the tying run. Glasnow was finally removed after issuing his fourth walk of the frame, leaving the bases loaded with nobody out for Alex Vesia.
Then Castellanos brought on the deluge, taking Vesia deep to left field for a first-pitch grand slam. It could have been a dagger, but that the Dodgers were able to fight their way back spoke volumes to their manager, even though the game ultimately did not go their way.
"They're a good ballclub over there, and you could tell the urgency that [Phillies manager] Rob [Thomson] was managing with over there," Roberts said. "And we wanted it, too. So two evenly matched teams, good series, and we just didn't do some fundamental things well today -- whether it be on the pitching side, on the defensive side, the baserunning side -- to give us a chance to win a series."
Los Angeles rallied for three in the seventh, with Hern¨¢ndez driving in his fifth run of the afternoon to bring the Dodgers even with the Phillies once more, and Will Smith putting L.A. in front with an RBI double off the top of the wall.
But the lead was short-lived, as Philadelphia stormed back for a pair of runs against Blake Treinen in the bottom half of the inning and stayed ahead the rest of the way. That decisive frame began when center fielder Andy Pages got a bad read on a line drive off the bat of Harper, which fell for a double.
Even though the Dodgers have opened their title defense by going 9-2, Roberts has made a point of saying that the team is still not playing its best baseball. That has been evident in both losses, where the fundamentals have been shaky.
In the first week-plus of the Dodgers' domestic regular-season schedule, they haven't really been out of any games despite those lingering issues. They've come from behind for seven of their nine wins, and even though they dropped two out of three in Philadelphia, it was a hard-fought series between two teams who expect to be back in the postseason.
¡°We know the team that we have," Hern¨¢ndez said. "Especially from last year, we know we can get back into games easy when we¡¯re losing by five, six runs. ¡ We¡¯re not taking at-bats for ourselves. It¡¯s more for the team, just trying to get on base, keep the line moving, score runs inning by inning and just get it close.¡±