One-run games continue to haunt Dodgers in walk-off loss

DETROIT -- In 11 other ballparks, Teoscar Hernández's deep fly ball to left-center in the ninth inning of Saturday's matinee at Comerica Park would have left the yard, putting the Dodgers over the hump on another day when they could not come up with the big hit.

Instead, the ball was snagged at the warning track, taking a tie game into the bottom of the ninth inning.

"I hit it good, not the best, but it happened to go to the farthest part of the ballpark," Hernández said. "That's … the luck that we have right now, but it's part of the game."

Hernández's flyout was the Dodgers' 27th out of the game, which was decided when Jack Dreyer gave up a walk-off single to Kevin McGonigle that sealed a 2-1 loss to even the series in Detroit. What was otherwise a solid afternoon for L.A.'s pitching staff was sunk by a lack of run production, a troubling trend for the team.

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Seven of the Dodgers' last eight games have been decided by one run. They have lost four of those games.

“It is a toll. It is a ripple effect," manager Dave Roberts said. "And it’s more on the pitching, where you feel like you can’t give up a run or we lose. And that’s not the way it should be, certainly with this offense."

On the season, the Dodgers rank fourth in the Majors with 664 runs scored. But their offensive production has dropped off greatly in the second half, as their 158 runs scored were tied with the Guardians for 19th.

As a result, L.A. has been overly reliant on run prevention at times during the past two months. That has put the onus on the Dodgers' pitching staff to work with slim margins.

"They'll go through their flows," starter Blake Snell said of the offense. "My goal is don't give up any runs and give us a good chance to win."

Snell got the ball rolling by striking out 10 and grinding through five strong innings. He only faltered in the third, when he allowed a run on a Gleyber Torres ground-rule double that put runners on second and third with nobody out. After throwing two pitches to his next batter, Hao-Yu Lee, Snell conferred with an umpire before making a break for the visitors' dugout.

Snell said later that he needed to remove a bandage on his toe that had moved out of position and was causing him to slip on the mound.

While Snell was able to limit the damage, the stressful third inning elevated his pitch count. He reached double-digit strikeouts for the second time in four starts back from the IL, but he was done after just five innings. Relievers Seth Halvorsen, Alex Vesia and Edgardo Henriquez put up zeros behind him.

But the Dodgers only scored one run to back the arms, on Freddie Freeman's RBI single in the sixth. L.A. stranded the bases loaded that inning, one of several missed opportunities for the offense. Freeman's knock was the team's only hit in six at-bats with runners in scoring position, and the Dodgers left six on base overall.

That left no margin for any of the Dodgers' arms. While the three relievers in front of him came away unscathed, Dreyer was unable to continue the trend to buy his team three more outs in extra innings.

"Today, we got one opportunity, one real opportunity. … Outside of that, we really didn’t threaten," Roberts said. "It’s been going on for quite some time, obviously. So just being able to put crooked numbers up and not play these one-run games where every margin is so fine, yeah.

"I know the work is there. I know the will is there. I know the talent is there. But yeah, we just haven’t put it together in quite some time consistently.”

The Dodgers have taken some solace in that they have consistently created scoring opportunities, even though they have failed to cash in. Their lineup is constructed such that any hitter, one through nine, should be capable of coming up with the big hit. But on Saturday, it eluded them once again.

"We put big innings together. We get on base, but for some reason, the big hit is not happening right now," Hernández said. "So you just gotta look back and see what we can do better, and just go the next day and execute it when you have the opportunity."