LOS ANGELES – Through his first four big league starts, Dodgers’ right-hander Bobby Miller was providing ace-level performance.

The last two Saturdays, however, reality has smacked him in the face, the same moment that all rookies experience sooner or later. The message: Kid, this game ain’t that easy.

A week ago he gave up seven runs to the Giants, all earned, in 5-2/3 innings in what turned out to be a 15-0 bludgeoning by San Francisco. And instead of redemption this time against the Houston Astros, Miller had a dreadful fifth inning: Seven hitters faced, five hits and five runs, including a Jose Altuve bunt single that unnerved him and an Alex Bregman grand slam immediately following that cost him the lead.

This time, his teammates bailed him out, with David Peralta’s pinch-hit two-run homer in the seventh bringing the Dodgers close and a three-run rally in the eighth, punctuated by a balk call that scored the go-ahead run, slamming the lid on the Astros, 8-7.

So maybe that’s the best of both worlds, a series of educational moments that hurt but don’t cost your team the game. It was a wild finish that almost had an October feel to it, and by the time it was decided the 24-year-old Miller was a footnote.

Among Saturday’s lessons: Don’t overuse the fastball early in the game, even when you have one that lights up radar guns the way Miller’s does. And don’t allow adverse events to get into your head.

When his fastball – listed by Statcast as a sinker – is right, it hits triple-digits. Miller threw sinkers on 10 of his first 12 pitches and 46 of his 80 pitches, and 20 of them topped 100 mph with 12 others in the 99 range. But in the fifth, all five hits came on fastballs.

Houston manager Dusty Baker, during his pre-game media briefing, was reminded of Miller’s velocity, and made this point:

“For a good hitter, hard don’t bother. Everybody’s about hard, but it’s about pitching, and command. If a guy throws hard and has command, now you got a problem.”

Miller said after Saturday’s game he felt he relied on the heater “a little bit too much” his last two starts.

“I started off with a a ton of fastballs, a lot of fastballs out there,” he said. “So maybe it wasn’t effective later in the game as it could have been because I gave them a really heavy dose of fastballs early in the game. You know, I probably could have mixed it better the whole entire game instead of waiting until the end to start mixing it, you know, mix it the whole time, which protects my fastball a little more so it gets on ’em a little more.”

The grand slam by Bregman came on a 98.3 mph fastball, for what it’s worth.

The play before that frustrated Miller. With runners on first and second and none out, Altuve bunted hard between the mound and first base. Freddie Freeman handled the bunt, but Miller was a little tardy getting to first base and Altuve beat it out for a single to load the bases.

“I don’t know” if there was a correlation between the bunt and the Bregman grand slam that followed, manager Dave Roberts said. “I do know that he was pretty rattled about that, you know, whether he says it or not. But I do think that there’s certain things that you still got to limit damage and continue to make good pitches. And, you know, you can see that inning where his tempo sped up. He just kind of forgot about secondary pitches and they were putting the ball in play, and you got to tip your hat to those guys in that situation.”

Catcher Will Smith seemed to agree.

“It kind of got away from him,” he said. “He might have lost a little bit on that bunt hit by Altuve. Wasn’t able to get out of that jam.

“Overall, he attacked. They came out pretty aggressive with some soft contact for hits. Obviously the Bregman homer hurts. Maybe we could’ve gone slider; you overthink it.”

Miller said he was frustrated but not rattled by the bunt. Then again, the last thing an athlete wants to do is show or acknowledge such weakness, so it would be perfectly understandable if he just didn’t wish to admit it.

“You know, mentally I felt good after the bunt,” he said. “Probably frustrated me a little bit. You know, I wasn’t expecting a bunt. But, you know, it’s same as always. It’s the basics. You know, every pitcher knows they got to get over there and cover first earlier.

“… The homer? Yeah I mean, (he) put a good swing on it, 2-2 count. He’s sitting fastball probably, I mean you never know. But got to locate the offspeed better in that count. Maybe could have got another slider right there, but you never know. He put a good swing on it.”

Given that (a) that turn of events gave Houston a 5-3 lead, and (b) Altuve and Bregman remain the two main villains in the eyes of Dodger fans, serenaded with boos and chants of “Chea-ter” as the only remaining Astros from the 2017 World Series, those plays by those players hurt even more. Yanier Diaz added an RBI single later in the inning to knock him out, and Miller’s ledger read 10 hits, six earned runs, three walks and three strikeouts in four-plus innings. He pitched to seven hitters in the fifth and got no outs.

As noted above, Roberts thought the game might have sped up for Miller in that inning, and in situations like that the pitch clock makes it tough, but not necessarily impossible, to slow things down a tad. But Miller, who pitched with the clock in the minors, said that wasn’t a factor.

“Mentally I was fine, you know?” he said. “I’ll be back next start. And I’ll be a lot better.”

Yes, adversity is an educational tool. He’ll get another shot Friday in Kansas City, and that may be where we learn some things about his resilience.

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