Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Dodgers scored a single run off Kyle Kendrick, which tells you that they deserved to lose. Granted, it could’ve easily been five or six runs had a few hard hit balls fallen or a few of those long fly balls had a few more feet to them, but still … it’s Kyle Kendrick and they got three hits on the day. Three hits. Yasmani Grandal‘s RBI single driving in Adrian Gonzalez was something Rafael Ynoa should’ve at least knocked down at second base, but that ended up serving as the Dodgers’ lone run.
That type of offensive performance had normally been bad news because Dodgers were 3-13 coming into today when scoring four or less runs (that’s all of the losses), and yet today they managed to prevail thanks to a combination of the surprising Mike Bolsinger and a relief core of Yimi Garcia, Chris Hatcher, and Kenley Jansen that held their own after a rough week.
Bolsinger went six shutout innings, allowing only three hits and a walk while striking out six. What he’s doing right now shouldn’t be possible, and he’ll struggle the third time through the order because he basically only throws two pitches, but he’s still done an admirable job thus far of getting the team desperately needed innings. The bullpen corps of Yimi and Hatcher followed with identically perfect innings, striking out two apiece, and Jansen looked even better than he did when he struck out four batters in an inning.
Perfect inning? Check. Improved slider? Check. Velocity up? Check.
Game over.
