Feltner sees flashes of best self in loss to LA

LOS ANGELES -- For a product of Ohio, who attended Ohio State and now calls Denver home, it was familiar conditions for Rockies right-hander Ryan Feltner on Monday at Dodger Stadium.

Making his first start of the season, Feltner was greeted with temperatures in the 50s with damp air and 25-35 mph winds that recalled spring in the Midwest or the Front Range, not an April night less than 20 miles from the Pacific Ocean.

“I’m from Ohio, so I’m used to that stuff,” Feltner said. “That didn’t affect me at all, but a little different than your typical L.A.”

Typical to L.A. was a relentless Dodgers lineup of proven power hitters throughout the order that added to the unsettling atmosphere in the Rockies’ 13-4 loss.

Feltner did his best to normalize all of it. Coming off a Spring Training when both control and the long ball were issues, he was haunted by both. Making it that much more disappointing was the fact that it started out so promising.

Feltner’s first inning went to plan, even with a walk to Freddie Freeman. He set down Mookie Betts, Will Smith and Max Muncy to keep the game scoreless. In the second inning, Feltner put down J.D. Martinez and a pair of promising Dodgers rookies, James Outman and Miguel Vargas.

“I felt really good about those innings and I’m looking forward to building on that,” Feltner said. “That’s the version of myself that I try to bring out there every inning.”

But it was shades of Arizona starting in the third, when the Dodgers’ Jason Heyward singled and Chris Taylor drove a ball through the wind for a two-run home run to center. Feltner escaped further damage in the third thanks to a double-play grounder from Freeman.

The ball-to-strike ratio became an issue in the fourth when Feltner walked two, but he looked to get back on track when he struck out Heyward. The Rockies’ offense rewarded him with four runs for a 4-2 lead in the top of the fifth.

He carried his momentum into the bottom of the inning with two quick outs, but a Freeman double was the start of his undoing. Walks to Smith and Muncy ended Feltner’s night before the Dodgers’ offense got to Jake Bird for most of the damage in a seven-run inning.

Feltner appeared to get Smith on a full-count strike low in the zone, but the call from home-plate umpire Mark Carlson went against him.

“You absorb a potential bad call,” Rockies manager Bud Black said. “We still had a number of guys that we could get out. We didn’t. That's on us.”

Said Feltner: “One thing led to the next and unfortunate events kind of [piled] on top of each other. It would have been nice to be out of that inning, but it wasn’t that way.”

Feltner was trying to overcome a spring when he had a 9.92 ERA, while giving up 10 walks and five home runs in 16 1/3 innings. And if he gets one strike call, he would have been looking at five strong innings with an opportunity to pitch into the sixth in his first start of 2023.

Even in a quiet postgame clubhouse, while speaking in hushed tones, Feltner did not want to lose sight of that. He tried to give the Dodgers’ veteran lineup a slightly different look the third time through the order, but the game within the game did not go his way.

“A good amount of it was that … a good amount,” Feltner said about being close to getting out of the fifth inning with his chance to earn the win still intact. “I think you want to be ahead of them without trying to trick people, but I think that was a little bit of it, for sure.”

Black wasn’t interested in almosts or what-could-have beens. In the end, Feltner was charged with five runs on four hits and five walks in 4 2/3 innings with seven strikeouts.

“He’s got good enough stuff where he should be able to continue on and make good pitches,” Black said. “When you have a 95 mph fastball with three other pitches that are quality, you have to get the ball in the strike zone. There are too many deep counts, too many counts that flipped when he was ahead. He’s just got to stay on the attack and get them to swing the bats on balls in the strike zone.”