Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
After last night’s roller coaster affair, tonight’s game seemed down-right docile at times. The Dodgers fell in a surprisingly excellent pitcher’s duel by a score of 2-1.
Tonight’s starting pitchers, Zack Greinke and Ian Kennedy can probably be considered rivals because of their history, and they pitched like it tonight. The Dodgers put a lot of balls in play against Kennedy, but they couldn’t manage much else. Kennedy only struck out four batters in his seven innings of work, but the balls in play just weren’t falling in. The only damage against Kennedy was a Yasmani Grandal solo shot in the third inning. After tonight’s game, Grandal is up to a 143 wRC+. Enrique Hernandez was excited about the homer:
Greinke matched Kennedy through his first seven innings. The only run the Padres managed to score was on the extremely rare Greinke error. With Will Venable on third base, Matt Kemp hit a tapper about 30 feet in front of the plate. Greinke threw to first (a maybe questionable decision since there was a potential closer play at home). The ball missed Adrian Gonzalez‘ glove and the Padres scored.
The score remained tied at one until the eighth. Greinke was extremely efficient all game, so there wasn’t really any second-guessing of leaving him out there. He did make quite a few pitches out of the stretch due to the Padres’ scattering eight hits, but he was never really in trouble. It did help Greinke that Kennedy struck himself out earlier in the game (GIF via Chad):
Greinke got the first two outs easily, but then he had to face Justin Upton. Greinke got him to a 3-2 count before Upton parked a go-ahead homer into the left-center bleachers. Greinke’s final line was eight innings pitched, two runs allowed, seven strikeouts, one walk, and one fateful homer. That would be more than good enough on most nights, but when the offense can only score one run there wasn’t much he could do.
The rubber game of the series tomorrow is a surprisingly interesting pitching matchup: Mike Bolsinger and James Shields. The first pitch will be at 1:10PM PDT.
