A three-game series against the Arizona Diamondbacks was a rough one for the Los Angeles Dodgers and in particular relief pitcher Kenta Maeda on back-to-back nights.
In the series opener he threw a fastball up and in to Diamondbacks first baseman Christian Walker that hit him square in the face. Walker was bleeding and immediately removed from the game.
Maeda then pitched the next night and perhaps thinking about the pitch that hit Walker, he served up a walk-off home run to Eduardo Escobar.
Walker ended up requiring season-ending surgery for a fractured jaw, and while that may weigh heavily on Maeda, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts does not believe that it affected him psychologically nor will it , via Ken Gurnick of MLB.com:
“It’s obviously a very unfortunate situation with what happened to Christian Walker,” said Roberts. “I don’t know how much Kenta knows, but I’m sure he knows the surgery and feels bad. He understands there’s no intent, but that doesn’t change the result. I don’t think it carried over to last night. It was a left-handed hitter.”
The Dodgers lost the final two games of their series against the Diamondbacks to fall back to second place in the National League West. They now are just a half-game behind the Colorado Rockies with just three games to play.
The Dodgers are still in position to claim the second Wild Card spot or even win the division if they can get it together over the weekend against the San Francisco Giants, and receive help from either the Philadelphia Phillies or Washington Nationals, and maybe both.
The Dodgers figure to need Maeda during this weekend’s series and again in the postseason if they manage to get that far.
