Cubs watch lead disappear in walk-off loss to Dodgers

LOS ANGELES -- Something Cubs manager David Ross has observed about his young team is that they’ve played in a lot of close games this season. The numbers bear this out, as more than half of the Cubs’ games this season have been decided by one or two runs.

Friday night at Dodger Stadium was another one of those games. Chicago held the lead going into the ninth, but ended up falling to the Dodgers 4-3 in 10 innings.

• Box score

It began with a strong start by Keegan Thompson, who struck out eight and came very close to going six complete innings -- and exiting with a shutout intact. After giving up a two-out double to Freddie Freeman, Thompson induced a fly ball to right from Will Smith. It should have been an easy play for the rookie Seiya Suzuki, but Suzuki was unable to glove the ball. His error allowed Freeman to score, making the score 3-1 and bringing an end to Thompson’s night after a career-high 96 pitches.

Suzuki was unavailable for comment after the game.

“Players make mistakes sometimes,” said Ross. “It's a really hard game to play. Sometimes things happen. I'm sure he wishes he would’ve caught it.”

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The play loomed large as Ross then had to turn to his bullpen, something that has so often led to things going south for the club this season. The Cubs entered Friday with 13 blown saves -- tied for second in the National League, behind just the Braves’ 17 -- and a 4.39 bullpen ERA, tied for fifth highest in the NL.

And while Chris Martin got out of the jam in the sixth, he allowed a home run to Jake Lamb in the seventh to reduce the Cubs’ lead to 3-2. Scott Effross and Mychal Givens combined for 1 1/3 scoreless innings, keeping it a one-run game for closer David Robertson.

Robertson allowed a single and two walks to load the bases for Mookie Betts, who tied it with a sacrifice fly to deep left field. It was Robertson’s fifth blown save of the season.

“Just command,” Ross said of what went awry with Robertson, who threw 12 of his 26 pitches for balls. “Felt like he kind of lost the feel for where his pitches were going. Falling behind in the count, [wasn’t] able to get in the zone. That’s all.”

The Cubs were unable to bring their automatic runner home in the top of the 10th, and Rowan Wick was called upon for the bottom of the inning. The speedy Trea Turner started off on second base as the auto runner, while the left-handed-hitting Freeman was due up first. The Cubs opted to walk Freeman to get to a righty hitter in Smith, but it didn’t work out, as the Dodgers’ catcher delivered the decisive blow with a walk-off single to left field.

The Cubs moved to 10-16 in one-run games. They’re 7-11 in two-run games.

Still, Ross feels that it’s close games -- even the losses -- where a young team like the 2022 Cubs can get a sense of what baseball at the highest level is really all about.

“I think that the closer the competition, and the closer that you come nightly to competing with some of the best teams in baseball, the best team in the National League, you learn to have the right at-bats and understand where to take risks, how to execute pitches,” Ross said after the series opener on Thursday, a two-run loss. “When we continue to put ourselves in these moments, we’re going to grow from those, we’re going to learn, we’ll figure out how to win. And the more you’re in these moments, the better off you’re going to be in the long run.

“Nobody learns a whole lot from blowout games -- it’s the close games where we get our lessons.”