The Sports Report: Lots of questions, not many answers for Dodgers

Howdy, I’m your host, Houston Mitchell. Let’s get right to the news.

From Jack Harris: For the better part of almost two months, the Dodgers have been a .500 team.

And the biggest problem in that time — a lack of reliable starting pitching from an injury-plagued, rookie-reliant rotation — only seems to get worse with each passing day.

In the offseason, the Dodgers thought they had fixed their recent starting pitching woes. They traded for Tyler Glasnow. They signed Yoshinobu Yamamoto. They spent nearly half a billion dollars trying to bolster both the top of their rotation, and the depth options behind it.

This week, however, in a series sweep against the Philadelphia Phillies that was cemented with a 5-1 loss Thursday, it’s clear the club’s rotation is an area of concern again.

And not with any easy, obvious fixes.

“If you had told us in spring training that we would be where we’re at with the depth of our starting pitching, I would have doubted it,” manager Dave Roberts sighed before Thursday’s game. “But, we are.”

Indeed, the Dodgers pitching staff is facing question marks almost everywhere it looks.

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Dodgers box score

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ANGELS

Cal Raleigh homered from each side of the plate for the second time in three days, and J.P. Crawford had a two-run homer while getting three hits and three RBIs in the Seattle Mariners’ 11-0 thrashing of the Angels on Thursday night.

Jorge Polanco had a two-run single in a four-run first inning as the Mariners wrecked the major league debut of Jack Kochanowicz (0-1) and kept piling on. Seattle opened a four-game series in Anaheim with its third straight victory.

Raleigh connected for a solo shot in the third inning from the left side of the plate and a three-run drive in the sixth from the right side. His 19 homers are an ongoing record for a Seattle catcher before the All-Star break.

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Angels box score

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CHARGERS

Take a tour of the Chargers’ new practice facility in El Segundo by clicking here.

LAFC

From Kevin Baxter: Last season the U.S. Open Cup was little more than an afterthought for LAFC, when the club thought about the tournament at all.

The team’s run to the final of last spring’s CONCACAF Champions League, combined with the start of the MLS schedule, meant LAFC played a game every four days through the first three months of the season. By the end of the year, the team had played an MLS-record 53 games in four countries and two continents, traveling far enough to circumnavigate the globe 2½ times.

There was simply no room for the U.S. Open Cup. But that’s not the case this season; with Wednesday’s 3-1 win over New Mexico United sending LAFC on to next month’s semifinals of a tournament, it’s suddenly being taken very seriously.

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SEAN BURROUGHS

From Chuck Schilken: The death of Sean Burroughs, who helped Long Beach win back-to-back Little League World Series titles in the early 1990s, was caused by fentanyl intoxication, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner.

A report released this week by the medical examiner’s office ruled the 43-year-old Burroughs’ death in May as an accident. The place of death is listed as “vehicle.”

On May 9, Burroughs, the No. 9 overall pick in the 1998 MLB draft, collapsed in the parking lot of Stearns Park in Long Beach after dropping off his 6-year-old son for baseball practice, Long Beach Little League president Doug Wittman told the Long Beach Press-Telegram at the time. Burroughs’ mother, Debbie, told the media outlet that her son had suffered cardiac arrest.

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MONTE KIFFIN

Former USC defensive coordinator and longtime NFL assistant coach Monte Kiffin, whose Tampa Bay Buccaneers defenses routinely ranked among the league’s best, died Thursday. He was 84.

One of the architects of the ultra successful Tampa 2 defensive scheme, Kiffin spent 13 seasons as Bucs defensive coordinator under former coaches Tony Dungy and Jon Gruden from 1996 to 2008 and helped the franchise win the first of its two Super Bowl titles.

Two years later, when his son Lane Kiffin was hired as USC’s head coach, Monte Kiffin took over as the Trojans’ defensive coordinator, a position he held for three seasons.

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THIS DATE IN SPORTS

1901 — Cy Young of the Boston Red Sox wins his 300th game with a 5-3 victory over the Philadelphia A’s.

1930 — Bobby Jones wins the U.S. Open. Jones, who also won the British Open, the American Amateur and the British Amateur, becomes the only golfer to take all four events in the same year.

1954 — The Major League Baseball Players Assn. is founded.

1964 — Mickey Wright wins the U.S. Women’s Open for the fourth time by defeating Ruth Jessen by two strokes in a playoff.

1970 — Jack Nicklaus wins his second British Open, beating Doug Sanders by one stroke in an 18-hole playoff at the Old Course in St Andrews, Scotland. It’s the first playoff at The Open since 1963 and the first at 18 holes.

1975 — Tom Watson wins an 18-hole playoff by one stroke over Jack Newton to win the British Open at Carnoustie Golf Links in Scotland.

1996 — Kirby Puckett retires after 12 seasons from Minnesota Twins, due to loss of vision in one eye.

1998 — France wins soccer’s World Cup, beating heavily favored Brazil 3-0 in the championship match.

012 — Every country competing at the London Games includes female athletes for the first time in Olympic history after Saudi Arabia agreed to send two women to compete in judo and track and field.

2014 — Mario Goetze volleys in the winning goal in extra time to give Germany its fourth World Cup title with a 1-0 victory over Argentina. The win is Germany’s first as a united country. West Germany won the World Cup in 1954, 1974 and 1990.

2015 — Novak Djokovic gets the better of Roger Federer at Wimbledon, beating him in four sets to win his third Wimbledon title and ninth Grand Slam championship.

Compiled by the Associated Press