Salomón Torres got the win, he's 6-3. Jonathan Broxton took the loss, he's 3-4. David Riske picked up his 2nd save.
Derek Lowe made a quality start for the Dodgers. He went seven innings, giving up just one run on eight hits, while striking out three and collecting 13 groundballs. The issue for the Dodgers, however, turned out to be the bullpen. Hong-Chih Kuo gave up a two-run homerun in the 8th inning to give the Brewers a 3-2 lead, and after the Dodgers tied the score in the 9th inning, Jonathan Broxton gave up a run in the 10th. In between the two, though, Chan Ho Park pitched a perfect 9th, striking out two.Not too much offensively (though there were some forces working against them, more on that in a little) for the Dodgers. Matt Kemp went 2-5 with a double and a run scored. Andre Ethier went 2-4, with a walk, a homerun, 2 RBIs, and 2 runs scored. Manny Ramírez went 1-3, with a walk and a RBI, but struck out with runners on 1st and 2nd in the 10th to end the game. Other than that, a few scattered hits and walks, but not amounting to much.
Arizona won today, so with the Dodger loss, they'll fall to one game back in the NL West race. The rubber match is at 1:10 L.A. time tomorrow.
Also: Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier both had outfield assists today, both nailing runners at 2nd... Eric Gagne, in his return to Dodger Stadium as a Brewer, pitched a scoreless 8th inning.
Opinion: Tough loss for the Dodgers, especially with the Arizona win, so we fall back into a place we've been a lot recently, one game back. I feel like we are living and dying by our bullpen this last week and a half. Since they blew two games last weekend against the Giants, they've been excellent during the week. They've kept us in games and kept the other teams scoreless. Now, however, we reach the weekend, and find ourselves losing due to the bullpen again. Though that's not the main problem. The bullpen's failure aside, we almost seemed destined to lose this game.
The Brewers made a slew of amazing defensive plays to take away hits from Dodgers, including Gabe Kapler, Milwaukee's left fielder, climbing into the stands down the left field line and taking away a homerun from Russell Martin. That run, of course, would have provided the extra run the Dodgers needed to avoid going into extra innings. Then, there was the 10th inning baserunning blunder. Andre Ethier, with Matt Kemp on 1st, hit a ball that missed leaving the park by less than a foot out in center field. It looked as though it might be caught (and with out luck on the night, I'm surprised it wasn't), so Matt Kemp headed back to 1st to tag up. The ball, however, was just missed and bounced off the wall. Kemp at the time though, was standing on first, and so was only able to advance to 2nd before the ball could be brought back in. David Riske was able to record the next two outs, and the Dodgers were shut down. It was an unfortunate loss, on a day when not much seemed to go our way. The true test will be tomorrow, when we'll see if the Dodgers can bounce back from such a tough game.