New angle of Andy Pages' non-robbery is a small consolation for Dodgers fans' fury

No one would blame you if you're still trying to shake off the Dodgers' loss to the Orioles on Saturday night. It was such a maddening, mystifying breakdown and such an awful culmination of everything that's been wrong with the Dodgers in the second half that it might be hard to feel anything other than anger.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto took a no-hitter through 8 2/3 innings, and the offense provided a marginal amount of run support. All it took was a cutter inside to Jackson Holliday, with Yamamoto down to his last two strikes, for the entire game to flip on its head.

It wasn't Yamamoto's fault that it went out of the park — it was a well-placed pitch — and it wasn't catcher Ben Rortvedt's fault — Yamamoto called that one himself. But it was easy to point the finger at center fielder Andy Pages, who didn't even leave the ground trying to rob Holliday of a homer, which bounced off of the top of the railing and caromed back onto the field.

A deep-dive into the ball's flight and where it hit the wall reveals that Pages was never going to be able to catch it. It hit the railing above and set a foot or so back from the fence leading into the grounds crew shed. Even if Pages had tried to jump for it, the ball would've been out of the park.

It's a small consolation, one that doesn't really help at all.

Defense of Andy Pages' non-attempt to save spoiled Dodgers no-hitter doesn't make loss hurt less

We know how the rest went. Yamamoto had thrown an MLB-high number of pitches that night, so he was pulled immediately after giving up the homer. Blake Treinen, who's been struggling ever since he came off the IL, loaded the bases and walked a run in. Tanner Scott gave up the final, killing blow: a two-run, walk-off single that forced the Dodgers to suffer a one-of-a-kind loss.

Ultimately, it was far more Treinen and Scott's fault than it was Pages', whose defense in the outfield has made unbelievable strides from the shoddy play that got him benched early in the season, but it's impossible for Dodgers fans not to think about the what-ifs.

What if Holliday hadn't put just the right amount of oomph into that cutter? What if Pages had been able to scale the fence and catch it? What if the bullpen had actually been able to hold it together for one night?

Of all of the Dodgers lows in recent memory, that one was by far the worst and hardest to stomach. Surely, the team is trying to shake it off and move on — and they did beat the Orioles to fend off a sweep on Sunday — but it'll take fans longer to get over it.