Nothing went right for the Dodgers on Tuesday night against the Twins. With Yoshinobu Yamamoto on the bump, an immediate error from Miguel Rojas allowed Minnesota’s first run to score and a runner to get to first.
Christian Vásquez doubled, and Minnesota was treated to an early 3-0 lead by the end of the second.
The Dodgers caught up at the bottom of the fourth, when Andy Pages hit a three-run homer, but it didn’t last long. Ben Casparius took over for Yamamoto at the top of the sixth and clearly didn’t have his best stuff. He gave up a walk, a double, a walk to load the bases, and then another walk to force in the go-ahead run.
After his seventh straight ball missed the top of the zone zone by maybe a foot, Casparius leaned down to touch his calf, then immediately called for a trainer. He exited the game and was replaced by Alexis Díaz, and Dodgers fans immediately expected the worst.
Casparius said after the game that his calf had cramped, but also that he felt his foot had “given out.” He’ll undergo an MRI and is day-to-day until results come back, but an IL stint — just a day after Tanner Scott went onto the IL — wouldn’t be surprising.
Ben Casparius day-to-day, set to undergo MRI after exit in Dodgers-Twins
Things went from bad to worse. Díaz allowed two of the runners Casparius left on base to score, and the Dodgers trailed for the rest of the game.
Edgardo Henriquez allowed three runs to score when he overthrew a ball meant for first base into right field, and the Twins got to 10 runs on the evening with a Ty France double off of Jack Dreyer. Shohei Ohtani hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth, marking the first time in his career he’s homered in four straight games, but it wasn’t enough to spark a rally.
The Dodgers clearly have zero solutions for all of these injuries and will go into the trade deadline hurting for relievers more than any other buyer on the market.
It’s going to make them aggressive, and force Andrew Friedman to overpay — his “least favorite thing to do” — but they still need to the heart of this issue during the offseason. Just because they can afford to replace guys that go down doesn’t make this a sustainable solution.
