Dodgers routed by Braves as Jack Flaherty lasts just three innings

ATLANTA – As the Dodgers’ starting rotation has crumbled around him, the Dodgers thought they could at least count on Jack Flaherty.

Not this time.

Matched up with National League Cy Young Award favorite Chris Sale, Flaherty turned in his worst start of the season, allowing four runs and lasting only three innings as the Dodgers lost to the Atlanta Braves 10-1 Saturday night at Truist Park.

The Dodgers have left the door open to the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks in the division by losing four of their past five games and six of their past nine. The Milwaukee Brewers also remain on their tail (they started Saturday two games back) in pursuit of a top-two seed in the NL and a first-round playoff bye.

“I know that teams are looming. I’m more focused on how we can play better baseball,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “We still, what do they say – control your own destiny. We have to play better baseball. But those teams aren’t going away.”

Neither are the Dodgers’ pitching problems.

Troublesome as it has been the past two years, that five-day layoff could be essential to the Dodgers’ October hopes this season with their starting pitching having unraveled and taxed the bullpen nightly.

Over the past five games, the bullpen (including two position players) has pitched more innings (24 ⅔) than the starting pitchers (18 ⅓) – and the starters have a 10.30 ERA in those games.

“We have to have better pitching. We do,” Roberts said. “You can’t cover five, six, seven innings a night. You’ve got to be able to chew up some outs.”

Things have gotten so bad with the Dodgers’ pitching staff that Miguel Rojas was sent out to pitch – in the seventh inning.

“It does suck. You win a lot of ballgames with pitching,” Mookie Betts said of the injuries that have depleted the Dodgers’ pitching staff. “But you’ve also got to hit, got to play defense. It does suck. But that’s no excuse. It’s no excuse. We just haven’t been playing good baseball by any means.”

Flaherty did not look sharp from the start. The Braves had three baserunners in the first inning and scored a run on Matt Olson’s RBI double off the wall in right field.

The Dodgers right-hander worked around a Whit Merrifield double in the second inning but ran into more trouble in the third.

Jorge Soler led off with a double when his drive went off Betts’ glove near the wall in right.

“I just missed it, man,” said Betts who jumped on the warning track and probably didn’t need to. “Just went after it and I missed it. I misjudged – doesn’t matter, I missed it.”

After a walk and a strikeout, Flaherty had a chance to get out of the inning with a double play when Sean Murphy hit a hard ground ball at shortstop Miguel Rojas. The ball was hit 109 mph, though, and Rojas couldn’t field it cleanly. The Dodgers got just one out on the play and the inning went on.

The Braves made the most of it. Jarred Kelenic drew a walk to load the bases and Orlando Arcia smoked a double into the right-center field gap to drive in three runs.

“I think each play you can dissect individually, but just in totality it’s not clean baseball,” Roberts said. “It’s not the baseball I’m used to watching, we’re used to playing.”

Another walk (Flaherty’s season-high fourth of the game) extended the inning, forcing Flaherty to throw 44 pitches. That put the finishing touches on his shortest start since last August with the Baltimore Orioles. The four runs allowed matched the most he has given up in eight starts as a Dodger.

“I was around the zone, wasn’t really attacking guys, wasn’t doing the little things right,” Flaherty said. “When you look at it, walked four guys, didn’t really get ahead. When I got into good counts, I wasn’t able to put guys away quickly. Counts ran long. They put some good at-bats together.

“You just move on from this one, move on to the next one as quickly as you can. Just make the adjustments, come in tomorrow and start working on things getting ready for the next one.”

Sale won’t be using Saturday’s start on his Cy Young hype reel. He threw just four strikes in the first inning and two of the three Dodgers batters reached base. But he escaped unharmed thanks to a first-pitch double play by Betts and Teoscar Hernandez’s inexplicable decision to try and stretch a two-out double into a triple.

“I just think overall, you look at the last week, we haven’t played good defense and I think when you’re playing teams that are vying for postseason berths, you have to play clean baseball,” Roberts said. “We’re giving up too many bases because of the defense and today Teo — the baserunning changed the momentum a little bit in the first inning so that’s uncharacteristic.

“Things like that we have to clean up. We have to be better.”

Sale took the rest of the night off after the Braves blew the game open with a six-run sixth inning against Evan Phillips and Ryan Brasier. The big inning featured another bases-loaded, bases-emptying double (by Olson).

That extended the Braves’ lead far enough for the Dodgers to trot out position players – Rojas in the seventh and Kiké Hernandez in the eighth – to pitch.

Chris Taylor reached over the wall in left field to rob a home run from Adam Duvall and protect Kiké Hernandez’s ERA.

“Kike’ and Miggy Ro picked us up with two innings, which was big,” Roberts said. “But it never feels good to run a position player out there.”