Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
One night after the odd and perfectly on-brand Cody Bellinger walk-off homer, the Dodgers went out and scored nearly all of their runs off of home runs and avoided any confusion about whether they won the game Sunday afternoon at Coors Field Dodger Stadium.
Five were solo shots including four by the guys you’d expect, Corey Seager, Mookie Betts, Bellinger and Max Muncy, but Enrique Hernandez came up with the biggest one in the 4th inning when the game was still actually close.
While the Dodgers connected on seven dongs, the Rockies came away with three themselves, two off of Ross Stripling fastballs. Thankfully the bullpen mostly continued its dominance across its five innings of work and the Dodgers completed the sweep with a 11-3 victory.
Honestly Antonio Senzatela‘s reaction there is relatable after watching all of that.
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The first two homers of the day, by Seager and Colorado’s Trevor Story, seemed a little fluky given their comically low expected batting average.
The nearly identical launch angle, MPH and distance of Seager and Story’s homers is matched by where the two homers landed.
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With the game tied 1-1 following Story’s homer in the 3rd, Betts hit his 10th of the year on a 3-2 fastball from Senzatela.
The Rockies quickly tied the game up, again, as Ryan McMahon absolutely destroyed an 88-mph fastball from Stripling.
As noted on the chart above, McMahon’s homer was quite a bit more convincing than some of the others.
A pair of two-out singles put runners on the corners against Ross Stripling, but a 1-0 slider erased any threat as Garrett Hampson rolled into a force play at second base. That wrapped up Stripling’s day after 64 pitches in 4 innings, with six hits and two walks allowed. Stripling did strike out a pair of batters swinging in the 1st, using a fastball against Hampson and a change to Story, but those would be his only strikeouts of the day.
As mentioned, both homers came off of fastballs, with Stripling now at nine homers allowed on the pitch and just one on any other pitch. Obviously the fastball is more likely to get hit out, as it’s used more often, but the Dodgers and Stripling likely need to address that soon.
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The score didn’t remain tied for long, again, as Hernandez took advantage of some lucky with two away in the 4th.
After a Joc Pederson single, Muncy rolled a ball through the right side of the infield for a single. Granted the opportunity to give the Dodgers the lead, Hernandez did just that and hit his 69th career home run to push the score to 5-2.
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Since the game mostly got out of hand from there, I’m just going to roll right through the rest of these.
Bellinger added his on solo homer in the 6th. He’s now hit four in the past five games, while also walking (4) more often than he’s struck out (3). All of that seems good.
Back from the IL, Will Smith opened up the 7th with another solo shot off of Tyler Kinley.
The Dodgers added one more in the 7th, the only run scored without a home run. The bases ended up loaded following a single by Betts and walks to Chris Taylor and Bellinger. Betts stole second and third, with Taylor following on the double steal, but the only run came home on a sacrifice fly by AJ Pollock.
And because the team didn’t want me to smoothly transition this recap, Muncy hit yet another solo shot and Betts added a two-run shot in the 8th off of Ashton Goudeau. That was seven home runs, and 12 hits all total, for the Dodgers as they improved to 22-8 with wins in 11 of their past 12 games.
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With the offense provided, the Dodgers bullpen could have had an off day without any real worries.
Instead it pitched four scoreless innings between Victor Gonzalez, Dylan Floro and Adam Kolarek. Gonzalez earned the victory, the first of his career, for his two innings of work that included a pair of strikeouts in the 6th on sliders. Kolarek’s inning of work stretched over the 7th and 8th as Dave Roberts continues to use him with considerable success (and a 0.00 ERA).
Dennis Santana finished up the game, pitching 1 1/3 innings while striking out two and allowing the game’s final homer, a solo shot by Sam Hilliard.
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On pace for 44 wins in the 60-game season and 119 in a full year, the Dodgers are now 8 games up on the Rockies and Giants, and 8.5 up on the Diamondbacks, with 30 to play.
The Giants are up next in San Francisco starting Tuesday before heading to Texas for three against the Rangers. As of now, the Dodgers do not face another team currently above .500 until Sept. 12 against the Astros in Los Angeles.
