Most of the Dodgers were showered, dressed and shuffling out of the clubhouse after Tuesday night’s 6-2 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies while Brusdar Graterol remained seated at his locker, his uniform pants still on, rubbing tears from his eyes as teammates and coaches stopped by to console him.
Eight pitches into his season debut after spending five months rehabilitating a shoulder injury, Graterol’s season likely was over, the burly right-hander suffering a Grade 3 strain (most severe) of his right hamstring while throwing a sixth-inning fastball to J.T. Realmuto.
Graterol clutched the back of his right leg and kneeled on the mound in pain. The distraught reliever had to be helped off the field. It seemed almost fitting that the Phillies rallied for three runs after his departure, Nick Castellano’s RBI single and Edmundo Sosa a two-run single off right-hander Brent Honeywell giving them a 4-0 lead.
“Yeah, that's super sad,” said pitcher Clayton Kershaw , who gave up one earned run and five hits in 4⅔ innings, striking out five and walking none, in his third start back from shoulder surgery. “There’s a lot of stuff that goes into coming back and getting on the field, and unless you've done it, you don't really know. So we all feel for him.
“He loves to pitch, he loves to be out there, he loves to be with us, so if this is a season-ender, it's really hard. But the good thing for him is he's really young, he's got a great arm, and he'll be able to bounce back next year. But it's definitely a tough night.”
The hard-throwing Graterol, nicknamed “Bazooka,” was one of the team’s top setup men last year, going 4-2 with a 1.20 ERA and seven saves in 68 games, striking out 48 and walking 12 in 67⅓ innings.
Though he hadn’t pitched all season, the Dodgers were hoping the 25-year-old had returned in time to boost a sagging bullpen and give manager Dave Roberts another seasoned playoff arm to summon in a potential postseason run.
But Roberts did not sound optimistic after the game, adding that Michael Grove would be activated to replace Graterol on the roster Wednesday.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Roberts said. “Brusdar has been so good for us. He’s pitched in a lot of big games, postseason games, and he had a tough road back. He spent a lot of time in Arizona on rehab, and to come back, and the third hitter he faced, to blow out, and it was a pretty big blowout … I feel terrible for him and for his teammates.”
Graterol took the mound to start the sixth with a 1-0 deficit and got Bryce Harper to pop out to third before giving up a single to Alec Bohm. Honeywell replaced Graterol after the injury and completed a walk to Realmuto before giving up run-scoring hits to Castellanos and Sosa.
The Dodgers cut the deficit to 4-1 in the bottom of the sixth when Teoscar Hernández doubled, took third on Freddie Freeman’s groundout and scored on Will Smith’s groundout.
They put two on with one out in the seventh, but Phillies All-Star left-hander Matt Strahm struck out pinch-hitter Austin Barnes and got Shohei Ohtani to fly out to right.
Hernández's 25th homer of the season, a 424-foot shot to center off right-hander Jeff Hoffman in the eighth, pulled the Dodgers to within 4-2, but Sosa and Kyle Schwarber hit back-to-back homers off Honeywell in the ninth for a 6-2 lead.
Carlos Estevez, acquired July 29 from the Angels, threw a scoreless ninth as the National League East-leading Phillies won for only the third time in 12 games. The Dodgers had their three-game win streak snapped and their NL West lead over San Diego reduced to four games.
Graterol’s injury and loss put a damper on a promising start from Kershaw, who rebounded from a brutal July 31 start at San Diego in which he gave up seven runs (three earned) and six hits in 3⅓ innings and failed to record a strikeout for the first time in 424 regular-season starts over 17 years.
Kershaw faced the minimum nine batters through three innings Tuesday, yielding only a broken-bat single to Austin Hays, who was thrown out at second to end the third.
Kershaw escaped a first-and-third, one-out jam in the fourth by striking out Bohm with a 74-mph curve in the dirt and getting Realmuto to ground out to third. He was nicked for a run on Schwarber’s RBI single in the fifth but minimized damage by winning a nine-pitch duel with Sosa, who struck out on an 83-mph split-changeup.
Kershaw threw 81 pitches, 55 for strikes, and induced 10 swinging strikes. His four-seam fastball averaged 90.4 mph, and he did a better job of mixing his 86-mph sliders and 73-mph curves.
“There was just a different look coming off that last outing, and you could see it,” Roberts said. “I think anyone who was watching the game can see the conviction in the throws. He was going to will himself to have a quality outing, and he did that.”
Kershaw said his stuff was “a little bit better tonight, just a little crisper,” but the three-time NL Cy Young Award winner was far from satisfied.
“Just made some dumb mistakes, a couple of guys got on base on 0-and-2 counts, which shouldn’t happen,” he said. “Those were frustrating, but overall, I think it’s another good step in the right direction.”
Short hops
Yoshinobu Yamamoto , out since June 16 because of a rotator cuff strain, threw a 30-pitch bullpen session. The right-hander will travel with the team and throw to hitters in Milwaukee next week, “and hopefully, if that goes well, we’ll keep building from there,” Roberts said, adding the Dodgers remain “hopeful” that Yamamoto, who went 6-2 with a 2.92 ERA in 14 starts, will return in September.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times .
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