Pivetta records rare performance against Ohtani, but Dodgers hand Red Sox bullpen brutal defeat

It had been five years, eight months and 21 days since the Red Sox last played at Dodger Stadium, lifted their fourth World Series trophy of the century and popped champagne in the visitors’ locker room.

2,091 days later, the Dodgers pulled off a 4-1 victory in the final minute to hand the Red Sox one of their biggest losses of the season.

Boston walked a tightrope on Friday night, holding a 1-0 lead — thanks to Jarren Duran’s 11th home run of the year — until the eighth inning, when Freddie Freeman’s grand slam turned the game on its head. The rare bullpen implosion was reminiscent of that postseason run of ’18, when Alex Cora mitigated the team’s unreliable relief options by using the starting rotation for more than a dozen innings of relief work.

The story of Friday night should have been Nick Pivetta’s gem of a start. In six shutout innings, he held the Dodgers to two hits, one walk and eight strikeouts, all on just 90 pitches.

“Excellent, excellent,” Alex Cora told reporters. “Reese (McGuire) did a great job with him tonight. Mixing up the pitches, fastball up, sweeper, cutter. … That was good enough, gave us a chance to win.”

Striking out Shohei Ohtani is no easy task, and the Red Sox starter did it three times Friday night. He and Milwaukee’s Aaron Civale are the only two pitchers to strike out Ohtani three times in a game this season.

“I really enjoy it,” Pivetta said of playing against Ohtani. “You play this game to always be the best. He’s one of the best, if not the best, so I enjoy those matchups and moments. That’s just what I live for.”

Pivetta’s appearance marked the rotation’s sixth consecutive start of at least six innings, the club’s longest streak since a six-game stretch from July 21-26, 2019. In three starts this month, he has a 1.83 ERA, 28 strikeouts and just five walks in 19 ⅔ innings and has yet to allow a home run. For the first time since May 19, the 31-year-old righty’s ERA is below 4.00 (3.87).

Unfortunately, Pivetta could only watch as the Dodgers stole the game back from the Boston bullpen, leaving him with a no-decision. After a fairly quick seventh inning in which he avoided a one-out walk, Zack Kelly walked Miguel Vargas to start the eighth. Chris Taylor was called for strikes, but the wheels were already in motion. Cora attempted a left-on-lefty matchup, but Ohtani greeted Brennan Bernardino with a first-pitch ground-rule double. Bernardino intentionally walked Will Smith to fill the field, Freeman sent a curveball deep to right field and away. Game over.

“You pick your poison,” Cora explained of intentionally walking Smith, whom he called “one of the best hitters in the league,” to get to Freeman. “We’re trying to get a ground-ball double-play there, and it just so happened that he hit a grand slam.”

“Obviously, we’re where we’re at,” Cora said, referring to Chris Martin and Justin Slaten who were on the injured list before the break. “That pocket there, Ohtani, Smith, Freeman, you’ve got to pick your guys and try to maximize the bullpen, and it just didn’t work out tonight.”

“We’re going to make it (without Martin and Slaten),” the manager assured. “We’re not going to make excuses. We’re going to keep going.”

The slam might have been irrelevant, or at least surmountable, had the Red Sox not blown every chance to get men on base. Boston outhit Los Angeles 9-4, but were 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position. They stranded six men on base, struck out nine and failed to draw a walk. Six times, they led off an inning with a hit, only to reach the third out with nothing in return.

“Man on second, no outs a couple times, right? We didn’t put the ball in play, or we didn’t make the over, and against teams like that you just have to keep adding,” Cora said. “That’s the biggest thing, and we didn’t do a good job of it tonight.”

Duran was the exception. The spark plug leadoff man picked up where he left off before the break. Or rather, during the break. Fresh off a home run to give Team American League the winning lead in his first career All-Star at-bat—and take home MVP honors as a result—Duran did the same for his usual team. The SoCal native led off the game with a first-pitch double, and his two-out solo homer broke the deadlock in the top of the fifth. The 397-footer to center would only be a home run in three stadiums; fortunately, Dodger Stadium was one of them.

Trailing 4-1 at the start of the ninth inning, Masataka Yoshida led off with a single. It would prove to be the sixth and final time the Red Sox turned a leadoff hit into nothing; Wilyer Abreu struck out and Dom Smith hit the first pitch into a game-ending double play.

Loss No. 43 is easily one of the most brutal of the season. There haven’t been many losses lately, generally speaking, and very few of this magnitude; the Red Sox were 42-2 this year when leading after the seventh inning. Their last losing game in the eighth inning or later came on April 16. That it’s the first game back after the All-Star break, with the trade deadline less than two weeks away, puts the pressure to bounce back Saturday into the stratosphere.