Bobby Miller falters in birthday homecoming as Dodgers lose to Cubs

CHICAGO — 

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 the 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 follow up last week’s scoreless season debut with another impressive display.

“The first inning went very well,” Miller said.

But then, in the span of 20 disastrous minutes in the second, the storybook afternoon quickly changed.

In the Dodgers’ 9-7 loss to the Cubs at Wrigley Field, Miller failed to get through the bottom of the second, giving up five runs in a 43-pitch frame that ended, mercifully, when manager Dave Roberts pulled him with two outs.

The game wasn’t over there. The Dodgers would later trim their deficit twice.

But, facing a big early hole on a brisk, breezy Midwestern day, the Dodgers couldn’t salvage the opening game of their weeklong trip, ending a streak of four straight wins and six victories in their previous seven games.

“It just seemed like he couldn’t command anything on the secondary side,” Roberts said of Miller. “The breaking balls, the changeups were just noncompetitive. He was working from behind a lot, and they made us pay.”

Dansby Swanson started the second-inning damage with a solo home run, launching a center-cut fastball after getting ahead in the count 2 and 0. The Cubs quickly tacked on another run, after Michael Busch drew a walk and Nico Hoerner and Nick Madrigal hit consecutive singles.

That tied the score at 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, with Miller struggling to find a rhythm from the stretch, the Cubs’ offense 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, Seiya Suzuki drove in two more with a double off the right-field wall.

With Miller’s pitch count climbing — he’d been a strike away from escaping the inning nine times in his final two at-bats but failed to convert — Roberts finally emerged from the dugout, turning to his bullpen just five outs into the game.

“[That] second inning was just pretty unacceptable,” Miller said. “You really feel for the bullpen on games like that, where the starter doesn’t set the tone the best way.”

While the deficit grew to 6-2 in the third on a solo home run by Busch — a former Dodgers prospect the team traded to the Cubs this offseason — the Dodgers did mount a couple of failed comeback attempts.

In the fifth, the team got back to within one after an RBI double from Smith, one of his four hits, and a two-run home run by Shohei Ohtani, his second consecutive contest with a long ball after going homer-less in the season’s first eight games.

“Early on, he wasn’t synced up with his swing and mechanics and timing,” Roberts said of Ohtani, who also had a double Friday but was not made available for comment after the game by a team public relations official.

“If he’s right, obviously we know how special he is,” Roberts added. “So I do think that hot streak is on the come.”

The Dodgers, though, wouldn’t get any closer in their eventual defeat.

The fifth-inning threat ended on three straight strikeouts, leaving Smith stranded at second base.

Then, the top of the seventh followed a similar script.

Trailing 9-5 in the seventh after the Cubs tagged reliever Michael Grove with three runs during the sixth, Hernández trimmed the lead again with a two-out single to left — with four RBIs Friday, he now has the early MLB lead with 14 this season — then took second base with his first steal of the season.

However, James Outman went down looking to retire the side, one of 12 strikeouts by the Dodgers Friday (they’ve topped that total once this season, in a loss to the St. Louis Cardinals last weekend).

“I think in some [spots],” Roberts said when asked how much the strikeouts stunted the club’s rallies. “But for the most part, it’s hard to point at the offense today.”

The final two innings provided the most drama.

With one on and two outs in the eighth, Ohtani launched a sky-high fly ball to center that momentarily looked as if it might go the distance, before ultimately dying short of the warning track to end the inning.

“I thought it had a chance,” Roberts said. “But with that 36-degree [launch] angle [off the bat], it just kind of hung up there.”

Then, in the ninth, the Dodgers had the tying runners on base after singles from Smith and Freddie Freeman (who also walked three times Friday).

But, in the culmination of a dazzling day from the Cubs’ sure-handed infield, Swanson and Busch snared a couple of hard-hit balls at shortstop and first base, respectively, turning a pair of defensive gems for the final outs of the game.

“They made the plays they needed to,” Roberts said, “and really minimized our potential for more damage.”