Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
Another Zack Greinke start, another dominating performance, and another Dodger win. This time, he (mostly) shut down the Angels, leading to a final score of 5-3.
The only damage against Greinke was caused by him playing with fire. The first three times he faced Kole Calhoun, he gave up three singles. Kole Calhoun was hitting in front of Mike Trout. Generally, allowing runners on base in front of Trout is a bad idea. In the first inning, Greinke got away with it, as Trout grounded into an inning-ending double play. The other two times, Greinke was not so lucky. In the fourth, Trout rifled a triple into the right-center field gap, scoring the Angels’ first run. In the sixth, Trout hit a single to drive in Calhoun for the second run.
However, the damage was limited because Greinke did not allow a hit to any other Angel hitter this evening. Just look at how Albert Pujols, one of the greatest hitters of this generation, did against Greinke tonight:
And none of these pitches were Greinke’s changeup, which is probably the best pitch he is throwing this year. Just ridiculous. Greinke struck out eight batters tonight and allowed one walk. Kenley Jansen followed in the ninth. He gave up a home run to Trout, because of course, then he retired the rest of the side without incident.
The offense was mostly powered by home runs tonight against Angels starter Hector Santiago. Singles Hitter Howie Kendrick got the Dodgers on the board in the first inning with his eighth homer of the year. Alex Guerrero hit his first home run since the grand slam against Colorado in the beginning of June. The Dodgers also added some insurance runs in the fifth, as Scott Van Slyke hit a bloop double, followed by back-to-back singles by Yasiel Puig and Yasmani Grandal. Grandal got a somewhat rare start against left-handed pitching, and collected three hits.
After tonight’s win, the Dodgers pick up a game on the Giants. Tomorrow’s starter is currently scheduled to be Clayton Kershaw, though that feels at least somewhat questionable after two consecutive scratches. Facing him will be Old Friend (?) Andrew Heaney at 1:10pm PDT.
