Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
Following the long national nightmare of a one-game losing streak after dropping a game to the Nationals yesterday, the Dodgers rebounded behind Kenta Maeda and Joc Pederson with a 5-0 victory to even the series.
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Despite Maeda’s performance, Joc was the undoubted star of the game. Of course, he hit solo homers in the 1st and 5th innings.
But most importantly, after being robbed by Brian Dozier, he gave him the middle finger as he was crossing the bag and SNLA gave us a slo-mo replay of it.
The win doesn’t come close to comparing to this glory.
In the 4th, Chris Taylor plated a run after blooping a single into right that turned into a triple.
David Freese capped off the scoring for the Dodgers in the 7th with a two-run shot to make it 5-0.
Thankfully, things were less exciting on the other end of things. Maeda got off to a scary start considering his control issues this year by walking the lead-off man. But that was close to all he allowed on the night, as he gave up just one more hit and one more walk the rest of the way, twirling six shutout innings and striking out six in by far his best start of the year.
While he has generally only had his change working this year, today he had most everything under control.
Julio Urias took over for Maeda in the 7th, and ended up pitching three scoreless innings to secure a save. He allowed just three singles and a hit by pitch, but he allowed them three of the four to reach in the 8th and right in front of Anthony Rendon.
Thankfully … uh, Max Muncy (!!!) was on defense and saved three runs with a stellar play.
This is becoming a trend more than a fluke.
Defensive keystone.
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The Dodgers are now 26-15 on the season (103-win pace) and stand 3 games in front of the Diamondbacks in the NL West. They’ll do it again tomorrow at 3:10 PM HST/6:10 PM PST/9:10 PM EST with Walker Buehler and Max Scherzer facing off in a marquee matchup.
