A lead gets away from Kenta Maeda and Dodgers lose their fourth in a row

A single fell in right field, and another landed in left. In the Dodgers’ bullpen, a pair of relievers warmed. Inside the dugout, Manager Dave Roberts made a decision. He would not take the baseball away from Kenta Maeda.

“I just felt that it was his game,” Roberts said. “And I’m going to give him a chance to complete the inning.”

Maeda earned that right, despite making only his fifth career start in Thursday’s game. He earned that right, even as the Marlins looked increasingly less mystified by his arsenal, and as his pitch count approached 100. He also earned the right to experience what came next in a 5-3 defeat.

Clinging to a one-run lead in the seventh, Maeda faced former Dodger Dee Gordon. Shortly after the game, Major League Baseball would suspend Gordon for 80 games because he tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. But operating free of punishment until the final out, Gordon flicked a game-tying single into left.

Roberts replaced Maeda with Pedro Baez, and suffered an outcome that has been all too common for the Dodgers (12-11). Baez, like so many of his fellow relievers this April, imploded.

First, Baez let a run-scoring single by Martin Prado snake through the infield. Next, he fell for a deke by Gordon at third base. Baez flinched, a small gesture with a large consequence. The umpires called him for a balk, which brought Gordon home. For good measure, Baez surrendered a home run to Marlins outfielder Giancarlo Stanton in the eighth.

And so the Dodgers lost for the fourth consecutive time, swept by a team that entered this series with six victories in 17 attempts. For four days, Don Mattingly’s Marlins silenced the Dodgers lineup. On Thursday, their bats exposed the patchy threads of its bullpen.

“They came in here and they pitched well,” Roberts said. “And they scored runs. And they outplayed us. For them to come in here and win four, we’ve got to turn the page and clean some things up.”

After an early flurry against Miami starter Jose Fernandez, the hitters went quiet. The rallies ended in futility — Fernandez struck out eight in six innings — and in farce.

With runners on board in the seventh, Gordon fumbled a grounder off the bat of Adrian Gonzalez. But in the tumult after the error, Chase Utley drifted too far from second base. He may have expected Enrique Hernandez, the lead runner, to race home. But Utley blamed himself afterward.

“The bottom line is I need to do a better job of picking up the lead runner,” Utley said. “It’s no one’s fault but my fault.”

The offense scored five runs in the first three games against Miami. But the team did not convene for early batting practice Thursday. Instead, bench coach Bob Geren conducted pitchers’ fielding practice.

On Thursday, the Dodgers needed to conquer Fernandez, the 23-year-old former National League rookie of the year. He gave up two runs in the first after an RBI double by Yasmani Grandal and a well-placed infield single by Yasiel Puig. The offense would not be so fortunate on the rest of the night.

Maeda returned to the mound with a two-run lead. He had given up one run over his first four starts, the fewest by any starting pitcher since at least 1913, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. He would match that total with one pitch in the second.

The moment occurred after Maeda faced his childhood idol. Like so many other boys growing up in Japan in the 1990s, he revered Ichiro Suzuki.

The Marlins inserted Suzuki into the lineup for the series finale so the two could duel. Maeda brushed Suzuki aside in three pitches, the last a slider that Suzuki whiffed over.

“I never imagined that I would be able to face him in my life,” Maeda said. “It’s somebody I looked up to when I was a child. And it’s an honor to be able to face him.”

The next swing was less feeble. J.T. Realmuto, the Miami catcher, stung a belt-high, first-pitch fastball. Maeda spun to watch the ball fly into right field. He expected it to hit the wall. When the homer cleared the fence, Maeda shook his head in shock.

The real shock was this: The bats of his teammates would not awaken until the ninth, when they staged a one-run flurry against Marlins reliever A.J. Ramos. The group stranded eight runners and hit two for 14 with men in scoring position en route to a fourth consecutive defeat.

“It can be tough,” Utley said. “The one thing you don’t want to do is try to do too much. We all get in that situation over the course of the season where you try to do too much, and sometimes you actually do less.”

Follow Andy McCullough on Twitter: @mcculloughtimes