Chris Taylor’s homer helps Dodgers rally from five runs down to stop Pirates’ streak
PITTSBURGH — Pirates left fielder Jack Suwinski drifted to the warning track, felt for the wall and leaped to rob Mookie Betts of a potential go-ahead, three-run homer in the sixth inning Tuesday night.
When Suwinski tried to do the same two innings later, however, Chris Taylor left him empty-handed.
In a back-and-forth contest at PNC Park — the Dodgers scored two runs early, then gave up seven, then rallied against a surging Pittsburgh team that had won seven straight — it was Taylor’s blast in the eighth inning that decided it, a three-run bomb that sailed over Suwinski’s head and lifted the Dodgers to an 8-7 win.
“To go out there and find a way,” manager Dave Roberts said, “very good team win.”
Added Taylor: “Felt like we scratched and clawed our way back into this one. That’s what we used to do so well.”
Early on, the Dodgers (13-11) appeared headed toward another dispiriting loss.
Their short-handed lineup, which was without Max Muncy (paternity leave) and J.D. Martinez (back discomfort), went quiet after a two-run bloop double from Miguel Vargas in the first.
Noah Syndergaard, meanwhile, dug them a giant hole with a four-inning, seven-run start in which he gave up nine hits and three steals, struck out only two and yielded a three-run homer to Andrew McCutchen in the fourth that gave the Pirates a 7-2 lead.
Despite the increased injury risk, the Dodgers are a much stronger team when Mookie Betts plays shortstop
“I didn’t really do much to help the team tonight,” Syndergaard said.
The Dodgers, however, responded at the plate.
After Freddie Freeman made it 7-3 with an infield single in the fifth, rookies James Outman, Vargas and Michael Busch keyed a two-run rally in the sixth.
Outman led off with a double, one of his two on the night. Vargas drew a walk, one of three times he reached base.
Then Busch, making his major league debut as the designated hitter, roped a two-strike slider from Pirates starter Johan Oviedo up the middle for his first hit and RBI, setting up Austin Barnes for a sacrifice fly two batters later.
“You kind of get lost in the moment in a way,” Busch said. “You’re not trying to do too much; we were down four or five runs. Just trying to pass it to the next guy and get us some runs and try to put a good at-bat together.”
Betts almost put the Dodgers in front with two outs in the inning, only to watch Suwinski rob him in what Roberts acknowledged was a “deflating” moment.
“But,” he added, “knowing we still had three at-bats left, we still felt pretty good about it.”
Indeed, after Vargas singled and Busch walked in the eighth, Taylor completed the comeback with his slump-busting blast.
Amid a five-for-45 start to the season, Taylor wasn’t expecting Tuesday to be the day he found a rhythm with his swing.
He hit on Monday’s day off in search of answers but couldn’t find a feel that translated to the game. Even during pregame batting practice, “I was kind of grinding,” he said.
So, Taylor said he instead “tried to keep it as simple as I can.”
That worked in the fifth inning, when he lined a single for his first hit in a week. Then he caught a break in the sixth, dropping a bloop into right that aided the two-run rally.
By the time he came up in the eighth, the pressure of his slow start had begun to ease.
“Once you start getting hits, you sort of relax a little bit,” Taylor said. “The tension frees up and everything slows down.”
Thus, when Pirates reliever Colin Holderman threw a 2-and-0 sinker belt-high on the inner half, Taylor’s mind wasn’t clouded by swing thoughts and mechanical cues. He simply planted his front foot, lashed his barrel at the ball, and watched it sail through a crisp Pittsburgh night, well beyond Suwinski’s reach.
“I don’t think my swing was any different than it had been,” Taylor said. “Sometimes you put so much pressure and there’s just that added tension, because you want to get a hit so bad, you want to come through so bad. It’s hard to perform that way.”
“Once you get a hit everything just kind of eases,” he added. “It kind of reminds you you’re not in as deep a hole as you think you are.”
The same can be said of the Dodgers, who have won four of five following a two-week slide that dropped them below .500.
Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior was on the mound for the Chicago Cubs during the infamous Steve Bartman incident in the 2003 NLCS.
Facing a five-run deficit, their inconsistent lineup battled back.
“To be able to do that, kind of work one inning at a time, get some baserunners then come up in some big spots,” Taylor said, “that felt good.”
And to close out the victory, a struggling bullpen shined with five scoreless innings — including a bases-loaded escape by Caleb Ferguson in the eighth, and a first career save from Shelby Miller in the ninth.
“It’s big, considering where we were at after the fourth inning, to go out there and find a way,” Roberts said. “There were a lot of good things that happened tonight.”
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