Friday could have been a birthday to remember for Dodgers pitcher Bobby Miller.
The Illinois native was pitching against his favorite childhood team, the Chicago Cubs.
He had more than 30 friends and family members in attendance at Wrigley Field, most of them clumped together in two rows of seats directly behind home plate.
And after striking out the side in the first inning for a second consecutive game, the 25-year-old right-hander seemed primed to build on his strong start to the 2024 season.
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But then, in the span of 20 disastrous minutes, the storybook afternoon slowly shattered.
In the Dodgers’ 9-7 loss to the Cubs at Wrigley Field, Miller failed to get through the second inning, giving up five runs in a 43-pitch frame that ended, mercifully, when manager Dave Roberts pulled with him with two outs.
Dansby Swanson started the damage, launching a center-cut 2-and-0 fastball into the bleachers for a solo home run. The Cubs quickly tacked on another, after Michael Busch drew a walk and Nico Hoerner and Nick Madrigal strung together consecutive singles.
That tied the score 2-2, erasing the early lead the Dodgers had taken on Teoscar Hernández’s two-run single in the top of the first.
And from there, the Cubs kept piling on.
A third run scored on a wild pitch, with Miller spiking a changeup that catcher Will Smith couldn’t corral. Then, with two outs, Sieya Suzuki drove in two more with a double off the right-field wall.
With Miller’s pitch count climbing — after he’d been a strike away from escaping the inning nine times in his final two at-bats — Roberts finally emerged from the dugout.
Just five outs into the game, the manager was forced to turn to the bullpen.
The deficit grew to 6-2 in the third on a solo home run by Michael Busch — a former Dodgers prospect the team traded to the Cubs this offseason — before the Dodgers mounted a couple of failed comeback attempts.
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In the fifth, the team got back to within one after a two-run home run by Shohei Ohtani, his second in as many games, and an RBI double from Smith. But then they stranded Smith in scoring position with three straight strikeouts.
A similar script played out in the seventh, with the Dodgers trailing 9-5 after the Cubs tagged three runs against reliever Michael Grove.
Hernández drove in a pair of two-out runs with a single to left — with four RBIs Friday, he now holds the early MLB lead with 14 this season — then took second base with his first steal.
However, James Outman went down looking to retire the side, one of 12 strikeouts by the Dodgers Friday (they’ve only topped that total one time previously this year, in a loss to the St. Louis Cardinals last weekend).
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
