Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
Following another one of their trillion off-days this month, the Dodgers opened their three-game set in Pittsburgh with a grand start and then never looked back while cruising to a 10-2 victory over the Pirates.
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The offense got it going early against opener Michael Feliz, with Matt Beaty singling and Max Muncy immediately following driving him in with a double.
After a Justin Turner single and a one-out walk from Corey Seager, the bases were juiced for David Freese. Fortunately, the ball also seems to be juiced this year and Freese smacked an oppo homer, his fourth of the year, on a ball that got in on him for a grand slam to put the Dodgers up 5-0 early.
The Dodgers added to the lead in the 3rd with a two-out rally, as Freese and Enrique Hernandez drew walks before Austin Barnes doubled them both in to make it 7 runs.
Things were quiet until the 7th, when who else but Cody Bellinger came up after an infield single from Joc Pederson. All he manged to do after his one game of struggle is smash his 18th dong of the year to right.
To finish up the scoring, Joc tripled past a diving Starling Marte in center to drive in Chris Taylor, who reached earlier on a single. That made it a touchdown and a field goal, an even 10 for the game.
On the other side of things, Walker Buehler has put it in cruise control recently. He wasn’t necessarily dominant, but he limited the Pirates to one run on five hits and a walk, striking out six.
Unsurprisingly, it seems that after he got his version of Spring Training out of the way, he’s been about normal.
But perhaps the most notable thing is the pen didn’t get torched. Ross Stripling gave up a run in the 7th after surrendering back-to-back two-out doubles, but Scott Alexander and Yimi Garcia finished the game off with a scoreless inning each.
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The Dodgers are now 33-18 on the season, a 105-win pace, and remain six games ahead of the Padres in the NL West.
The two teams will do it again tomorrow night at 1:15 PM HST/4:15 PM PST/7:15 PM EST with Hyun-Jin Ryu (LHP/1.52 ERA/2.65 FIP/2.30 DRA) looking to continue his ace final form against Joe Musgrove (RHP/3.67 ERA/3.09 FIP/3.13 DRA), who is unfortunately not a shitty Pirates reliever.
