Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
Following a three-game losing streak, the Dodgers have now rebounded with a three-game winning streak after tonight’s 5-4 victory against the Reds.
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Alex Wood was back for the Dodgers after missing a couple starts, and while fortunately the injury was just to his sternum, I think everybody was curious to see whether it would affect his stellar performance so far in 2017. Well, he looked just as sharp as ever, cutting through a quality Reds lineup without a ton of difficulty on the night.
While he understandably tired late and had to be removed after 5.2 innings and 87 pitches, he walked none, surrendered just five hits and struck out seven batters. He did, however, end up being charged with three runs, with one coming on an RBI single in the third and two being given up by somebody else, as I’ll get to later.
Despite the ending line, Wood definitely pitched well on the night and hopefully the injury doesn’t flare up again.
Offensively, the Dodgers got him support early. A Chase Utley single to lead-off the game in the 1st was followed by a Corey Seager double to plate a run.
Seager advanced to a third on a fly out, and then scored on an Adrian Gonzalez sacrifice fly. That wasn’t it, though, as one pitch after he tried to bunt for a hit, Cody Bellinger unloaded on a hanging slider to make it 3-0.
In the 4th inning, the Dodgers added on a bit more behind a Yasiel Puig lead-off double, a sacrifice bunt by Wood, and an Utley double that bounced off the wall in right to make it 4-1.
Still, the Dodgers should’ve done better, as they stranded runners in scoring position in the second, fifth, and seventh innings, and never really broke out for the big inning that always seemed to be coming.
Unsurprisingly, that came back to haunt them after Wood was relieved with two outs with runners on first and second in the sixth by Josh Fields. Devin Mesoraco appeared to be hunting for the fastball up, and he got it from Fields, crushing a pitch over the left-center field wall for a game-tying three-run homer to make it 4-4. Fields got out of the inning with a fly ball to the warning track, and then struck out the side in the seventh, but the damage ultimately came against him.
Pedro Baez then entered to get the eighth and allowed two hits in his inning but got out of it without damage thanks to Puig basically intimidating Joey Votto into not taking an extra base twice.
https://twitter.com/ChadMoriyama/status/873762111616204800
That prevented at least a run and kept things deadlocked.
Kenley Jansen … well.
Yeah, a 1-2-3 ninth. What else?
The Dodgers looked like they were about to strand more runners in the ninth after back-to-back one-out singles by Puig and a pinch-hitting Justin Turner, but Seager came through with a two-out oppo double down the line to win it.
Apparently a rare occasion.
.@coreyseager_5 told me it's his first walk-off EVER, at any level of baseball. https://t.co/oZJSbyxrAl
— AlaNNa Rizzo (@alannarizzo) June 11, 2017
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Chris Taylor helped on defense with this great play in center.
A-Gon is ready for USA/Mexico.
Oops.
Reporter to Dave Roberts: "I think all four of your walk-offs have been at home…." pic.twitter.com/vlIIT2biaH
— Ryan Walton (@RyanCPWalton) June 11, 2017
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The Dodgers improve to 38-25 overall and 24-10 at home, but remain in second place and 2.5 games back of the Rockies in the NL West due to the Cubs being useless.
The stage is set for a sweep against the Reds tomorrow at 10:10 AM HST/1:10 PM PST/4:10 PM EST. The Dodgers will send Hyun-Jin Ryu (4.08 ERA/4.78 FIP/5.06) to the mound against Tim Adleman (4.42 ERA/4.72 FIP/5.87 DRA), which seems to be a decently equal pitching matchup, especially since both are trending better in their recent appearances.
