
In the top of the second inning, Max Muncy hit a one out double before the Dodgers got their second out. That brought up Enrique Hernandez, who then Enr-ipped a hanging breaking ball down the line for a two-run home run that put the Dodgers on top.
For the next few innings, both Nola and Sasaki were allowed to settle in. Neither allowed much of anything, which was particularly suspect on Sasaki’s part considering the struggles he had had the first two starts of his major league career. It didn’t seem like the Phillies were interested in letting him work deep into counts as they started to ambush fastballs early in counts, but the Dodgers employed a quick hook with him regardless.
For Nola’s part, he settled down a bit after that home run and looked pretty good until he faced Michael Conforto in the sixth and left a cutter in the exact middle of the plate.
Now, the Phillies have beaten up on the bullpens thus far. That’s been their early season M.O., to beat the bullpens after the getting beaten by the starters. Unfortunately for them, the Dodgers’ bullpen is not the same as the Nationals and Rockies. Over the final five innings, the quartet of Anthony Banda, Ben Casparius, Alex Vesia and Tanner Scott allowed exactly two baserunners in the form of a single and a hit batter. That domination led to the Phillies not being able to score, which led to their second loss of the season.
Sometimes, you just lose to the better team.
You can only keep a team down for so long. The day after playing a near perfect game to beat the Dodgers, the Phillies came up a bit short today, swinging quiet bats and having two mistake pitches leave the yard in what turned into a fairly meek loss to L.A.
It started off well. After Aaron Nola set down the top part of the order to begin the first inning, the Phillies put their first two runners on against Roki Sasaki, even getting a stolen base from Trea Turner to put runners in scoring position with nobody out. Bryce Harper struck out in a pretty bad at bat before Alec Bohm grounded out to bring in Kyle Schwarber and give the Phillies an early 1-0 lead.
That lead lasted what felt like 37 seconds.

The Dodgers took Aaron Nola deep twice as their bullpen shutdown the Phillies offense.

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