Dominant from the get-go, the Dodgers cruised through an 11-5 win over the Rockies. And fair or not, too many times this season, particularly as of late, it has felt as though this team didn’t live up to the expectations of dominating a starting pitcher in a matchup they should handle. While the end product has been there, the underlying numbers suggest a complete mismatch for Tomoyuki Sugano against the Dodgers’ offense, and that’s precisely what transpired on the field.
The three straight groundouts to open the first were just the Dodgers’ bats warming up before putting up seven runs past Sugano with long balls from Max Muncy and Shohei Ohtani—the former obliterating a 461-foot home run into the second deck in right field, the latter taking Sugano deep in the big leagues for the fourth time in still a rather small sample size. Mookie Betts and Andy Pages each drove in one in the first three innings before Muncy turned the Dodgers’ lead into a commanding one with a three-run shot in the third.
By the time Sugano left the mound, the Dodgers held a 7-1 lead and still had four innings to work with. Aiming to increase his tally of just one multi-homer game this season, which, interestingly enough, came in a Dodgers loss, Ohtani brought the power once again in the sixth. The Dodgers designated hitter got a middle-middle sweeper of his dreams and crushed it for a 452-foot home run, certainly not settling for any cheapies, as he would end the game with a team-high four hits.
It wouldn’t have felt right for the Dodgers to do all of this slugging as a team and not have Freddie Freeman in on the action. The veteran first baseman, who came into this game with a .240 SLG in August, without an extra-base hit since the end of July, finally broke through with a classic double down the opposite field line in the sixth—one of a couple of two-baggers he’d hit in this lopsided win.
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Traditionally in Coors, it’s hard to feel safe, but the same level of dominance displayed offensively could also be seen on the mound. Battling himself more than the Rockies hitters, it seemed, Blake Snell only got into trouble for a brief moment when the Rockies stopped going outside the zone in the third.
Retiring the first six hitters he faced in the order, Snell then found himself with the bases loaded and no outs in the third, having walked the bottom three hitters in the Rockies order—none of them necessarily known for their plate discipline skills. While handling potential threats of your doing can lead to massive innings at Coors Field, Rockies hitters simply had no impact against Snell, and he was able to limit the damage to just one, retiring the next three in order.
In the fourth, the Rockies finally managed a couple of hits off Snell, both of them on balls that weren’t crushed by any means, and once again he swiftly navigated his way through trouble. Efficient in all but the third inning, Snell still managed to complete six innings comfortably. Showing the focus you want to see from a championship-caliber team, the Dodgers came out flashing the leather in the bottom of the sixth when they already held a sizeable lead—Tommy Edman and Mookie Betts made outstanding bookend plays to help Snell complete those six frames.
On a negative note, the disappointing journeys of Kyle Tucker and Edwin Díaz carry on. Tucker dropped a fly ball on a routine play in the seventh, which allowed the Rockies to score their second run, unearned against Alex Vesia—not to mention an 0 for 5 with the bat for the right fielder, lowering his season OPS to .692. While Díaz ran into all kinds of problems in the ninth, allowing four hits and three runs before finally finishing the frame.
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Game particulars
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Home runs— Max Muncy (25), 2 Shohei Ohtani (29)
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WP—Blake Snell (1-1): 6 IP, 2 hits, 1 run, 3 walks, 5 strikeouts
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LP—Tomoyuki Sugano (12-6): 5 IP, 7 hits, 7 runs, 6 earned runs, 1 walk, 3 strikeouts
Up next
Six days after setting a season-high in pitches with 112 to help the Dodgers beat the Royals at home, Eric Lauer takes his 6-1 record with the Dodgers to Coors Field, facing Ryan Feltner. The first pitch is scheduled for 5:40 p.m. (PT).
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