CHICAGO — Tuesday night’s game at Wrigley Field mirrored what much of this young season has felt like at large.
Every time the Dodgers looked to be gaining real traction, they quickly spun out. Every time they seemed to find their top gear, they instead slipped back into reverse.
Despite leading by three runs in the first inning, then three again entering the eighth, the Dodgers couldn’t hold on in a wild 11-10, extra-innings loss to the Chicago Cubs, getting outplayed — or, at the very least, outslugged — on a night the wind was blowing out at Wrigley Field.
The result represented a backward step for the Dodgers in this opening month, another dose of reality just when it appeared they were turning a corner.
After winning five of six games entering the night, the challenge now will be avoiding the same kind of prolonged stumble that followed their 8-0 start to the season, when they dropped six of nine games between their two winning stretches.
Tuesday’s game finally ended in the 10th inning, when, in what was the night’s fourth and final lead change, Ian Happ walked it off with a single to right field.
Long before then, however, the Dodgers squandered chances to effectively close it out.
Momentum would build, then vanish.
A team of supreme talent is still clearly far from top form.
In the first inning, Tommy Edman opened the scoring with a three-run home run — only for starting pitcher Dustin May to immediately give five runs back in the bottom of the inning.
The Dodgers steadied the ship from there, with Andy Pages hitting a towering solo shot in the second and May working out of trouble in the next three innings — only for May to leave a fastball right down the middle to Pete Crow-Armstrong in the fifth inning, giving up a two-run blast that made it 7-4.
The Dodgers seemed to flip the script in the top of the seventh, scoring five times in an inning keyed by Freddie Freeman’s go-ahead two-run double down the left field line.
But even with a 10-7 lead, and six outs left to get, the Dodgers face-planted down the stretch.
Kyle Tucker took Alex Vesia deep in the eighth for a two-run homer. Miguel Amaya forced extra innings with a tying, two-out homer in the ninth off Tanner Scott, giving him his second blown save in 10 opportunities this year. Then, after the Dodgers stranded their automatic runner at third in the top of the 10th, recently called-up right-hander Noah Davis threw just one pitch in the bottom half of the inning: a hanging screwball Happ slapped to right for his walk-off single.