Dodgers too sloppy to overcome Roki Sasakis shaky start in loss to Rangers

Roki Sasaki repeatedly averted disaster Sunday afternoon.Unfortunately for the Dodgers, the rest of the team couldn’t do the same.In a 5-2 loss to the Rangers, Sasaki was not sharp, giving up five hits and five walks over a four-inning outing marred by continued command issues.However, he somehow limited the damage to just two runs.The bigger problems, at least in Sunday’s defeat, came from a string of sloppy mistakes made by the rest of the roster.Sasaki might have been credited with the losing decision.

But the team missed numerous chances to help get him off the hook.Offensively, the Dodgers never got going against two-time Cy Young Award winner Jacob deGrom, despite a leadoff home run from Shohei Ohtani. They tallied only six hits while going 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position.They left nine total men on base, including two stranded in both the fifth inning (when Kyle Tucker struck out on a changeup in the dirt) and the seventh (when an RBI single from Tucker was sandwiched around rally-killing pop-outs from Ohtani and Andy Pages).More maddening, however, were the mental miscues that poured further salt into the wound.There was a baserunning blunder that extinguished another two-on, two-out threat in the bottom of the third –– when a botched double-steal by Alex Call and Ohtani led to Call getting caught in a rundown that ended the inning.Defensive breakdowns helped the Rangers (8-7) score insurance runs in the sixth and eighth innings –– the first on an Edgardo Henriquez throwing error that put a runner at third base, setting up Brandon Nimmo for an RBI grounder; the next on a wild pitch from Will Klein that brought another run across the plate.The Dodgers (11-4) also burned both of their ABS challenges in the third inning, the latter coming on an ill-advised appeal from Hyeseong Kim after he was correctly rung up on a called third strike.And even the one time the Rangers gifted them an opportunity, on a dropped Freddie Freeman pop-up in th...