ST. LOUIS -- For the second time in three games, the Los Angeles Dodgers reserved their most pointed postgame comments for an umpire. That's usually a sign things aren't going well.
The Dodgers managed just two hits off the St. Louis Cardinals in a 3-1 loss at Busch Stadium Sunday afternoon. When Justin Turner took a called third strike from Trevor Rosenthal to end the game, he stormed after plate umpire Marty Foster, going jaw to jaw before Foster ejected him -- to the extent that you can eject someone from a game that had already ended.
Maybe Foster just wanted the satisfaction of assessing the fine that will take a tiny bite out of Turner's next paycheck.
Two nights earlier, both A.J. Ellis and manager Don Mattingly were ejected during a beef with Mike Winters. Like Ellis on Friday, Turner got in a couple of shots when members of the news media approached him after Sunday's game.
He said he asked the umpire whether the third pitch of the at-bat, a called strike, was as far outside as Foster would call it. He claimed the umpire told him yes, but then rung him up on a pitch that replays showed to be a couple of inches further outside.
Rosenthal had walked both Andre Ethier and Yasmani Grandal, so Turner represented the go-ahead run. Turner said the Dodgers were upset because they felt Rosenthal got the benefit of a generous strike zone during the 2014 National League Division Series.
"All of a sudden, we're going to give him pitches off the plate and reward the guy who doesn't know where it's going? It doesn't seem right," Turner said. "When you take a good pitching staff and they don't have to throw strikes, that makes them a lot better pitching staff."
In their last six road games, the Dodgers have scored a total of six runs and been shut out four times. That is less surprising than it sounds. Those six games were all played at AT&T Park and Busch Stadium, two of the most pitcher-friendly stadiums in baseball. Those games were all played against San Francisco Giants and Cardinals pitchers, both top five staffs in the National League.
So, whether umpires are getting caught up in the emotions of the big crowds at these stadiums -- or whether they simply have it in for the Dodgers, for some odd reason -- the Dodgers' task, clearly, is to perform better against quality pitching in adverse settings. Easier said than done, of course, but probably a useful task for a team with World Series aspirations, wouldn't you think?
"Pitching's going to stop hitting for the most part," Mattingly said. "I think their guy was good. [Michael] Wacha threw the ball good. Again, I'm not really at a loss for anything. I think we're going to score. I think guys that throw the ball good and make pitches are going to get outs. I'm not worried about our club."
The best teams usually play well enough to overcome obstacles like missed calls and bad hops. The Dodgers were doing that quite nicely as recently as early May, but they finished the final month of spring on a downer, losing 10 of their last 17 games. A sputtering offense clearly is the cause. Beginning on May 16, they started sputtering and breaking down. In the Dodgers' first 37 games, they averaged 5.25 runs per game. In their last 12, they are averaging 2.58 runs per game. Again, it's not a coincidence that they've been facing guys like Madison Bumgarner, James Shields, Michael Wacha and, on Sunday, Carlos Martinez.
"We're going to be fine offensively," Mattingly said. "I'm not concerned about, ‘Are we going to be a club that can score enough to win.' "
Martinez might have pitched the best of the bunch on Sunday and he chose a touching time to step up his game. He held the Dodgers to just one hit over seven innings -- Ethier's second-inning single -- and did so on the one-year anniversary of his close friend's arrival in the major leagues. Oscar Taveras died last October in a car crash and Martinez has been wearing his uniform number, 18, this season to pay his respects. The two players grew up near one another in the town of Sosua in the Dominican Republic.
Grandal was playing winter ball in the Dominican last October when his team was informed that Taveras had died.
"It's a sad story," Grandal said.
