Rather than make a post for each of these games, I am doing a summary after every game of this series. I have other stories lining up, but this is an important series and should be discussed game by game. Some roster moves coming as Wrobleski is now expected to pitch game 3 on Sunday, plus the roster expands to 28.
The Dodgers, who have never lost a regular season game to Merrill Kelly, started the game with three consecutive homers on three consecutive pitches. First time in Dodger history that they have begun a game with three homers in a row. Ohtani, over the center field wall, Betts into the left field bleachers, and Freeman over the pool in right center. Teo then popped out. Smith singled and Lux lined into a double play.
Gavin Stone, the Dodgers most reliable pitcher this year, took the mound in the bottom of the first up 3-0. Carroll, leading off, hit a ball high off of the center field wall that Kiermaier tried to catch, it was just above his glove and when it caromed off of the wall, Carroll circled the bases for an inside the park homer. McCarthy singled, Pederson singled, and then Gurriel doubled on a ball that Teo misplayed, and McCarthy and Pederson scored. Smith grounded out, Gurriel taking third. Del Castillo walked and then Suarez hit a sac-fly and Gurriel scored the 4th run for the D-Backs. Guilleorme grounded out to end the inning with Az in front 4-3. Here we go again!
Dodgers wasted no time answering back. Muncy singled, Rojas singled. Kiermaier hit a ball that Kelly fielded but threw wildly to third for an error loading the bases. Ohtani hit a sac-fly scoring Muncy. Betts struck out. Freeman then singled driving in Rojas. Teo grounded out to third to end the inning. 5-4 LA. Stone set the D-Backs down 1-2-3 in the bottom of the second.
The Dodgers got a Muncy walk and a Rojas double in the third but did not score. Stone gave up a homer to Gurriel to tie the game in the bottom of the third. It would be Arizona’s last hit of the game. Kelly got the Dodgers 1-2-3 in the 4th. Stone did the same in the bottom of the 4th. In the top of the 5th with 2 outs, Lux doubled and Muncy singled him in. LA 6 Az 5. Rojas grounded out to end the inning. Stone went out and set Az down 1-2-3 in the 5th.
Edman replaced Kiermaier as a pinch hitter. He grounded out, Shohei grounded out and Betts struck out. Honeywell came in to relieve Stone. Gurriel grounded out, Smith walked, and Honeywell threw a wild pitch sending him to second. He got the next two hitters to end the inning.
Freeman flied out to open the 7th. Ginkel replaced Mantiply. Teo doubled, Smith and Lux walked loading the bases with one out. Kike pinch hit for Muncy as Puk replaced Ginkel. Kike struck out and Rojas grounded out to end the inning stranding three runners. Honeywell walked Guilleorme, and Perdomo got him to second on a sacrifice bunt. Guilleorme went to third on a wild pitch. Carroll hit a sac-fly to tie the game. McCarthy struck out.
In the top of the 8th, Edman singled. Ohtani struck out. Thompson replaced Puk. Edman stole second, Mookie then hit a slow roller to the left of the pitcher, Thompson went to third and they got Edman in a rundown. He was tagged out by Guilleorme. Betts was on first. Freeman singled for his 3rd hit, and Teo struck out on 3 pitches to end the inning.
Ben Casparius, just called up from AAA along with Honeywell when Kershaw and Kelly were both placed on the IL, came in to pitch the bottom of the 8th for his MLB debut. He set down Arizona on three fly ball outs. In the top of the 9th, Smith singled, and Taylor ran for him. Lux singled, runners on 1st and 2nd. Kike sacrificed them to 2nd and 3rd. Martinez replaced Thomson for Arizona. With the infield in, Rojas hit a line drive that Guilleorme had to jump to catch. 2 outs. With 2 strikes, Edman singled to right, Taylor and Lux scored. 8-6 LA. Edman went to second on a wild pitch. Ohtani hit a sharp liner to right that Carroll snagged.
Evan Phillips, the last man standing in the pen, came in to pitch the 9th. Del Castillo flied out; Suarez grounded out to Rojas, and pinch hitter Josh Bell flew out to Chris Taylor in center to end the game. Phillips got his 18th save, and Casparius got his first MLB win. LA had 16 hits to Arizona’s 5. They were 3-13 with RISP and left 11 runners on base. The Dodgers are 82-54, with a 6-game lead over both SD and Az. They have 26 games left to play. San Diego has only 24.
The Dodger offense has woken up in Arizona scoring 18 runs in 2 games. The pitching has allowed 15. Wrobleski is in Arizona and will no doubt make a spot start tomorrow with Flaherty scheduled to pitch Monday’s finale.
Minor League Scores
OKC 6 Round Rock 5 10 innings: OKC scored 2 runs in the top of the 10th inning to beat Round Rock. Outman returned to the lineup and was 0-4 with 3 Ks. Andy Pages did not play. Freeland was 2-4 with a homer. 3 of the OKC runs were unearned. Gamboa started the game and went 4 innings giving up 6 hits and 4 runs. Brogdon went a scoreless inning despite giving up 3 hits. He struck out 2. Dodson, Little and Feyereisen each went an inning without giving up anything. Dreyer gave up one run and got the save with Feyereisen getting the win.
Tulsa dropped a 6-2 decision to Corpus Christi. The Drillers scored 1 in the top of the first, the Hooks answered with 3 in the bottom of the inning. Tulsa scored again in the top of the second, but they were shut out after that. They managed only 4 hits. The Hooks also managed only 4 hits. Keith hit his 14th homer in the first. Ferris took the loss going only 1/3rd of an inning. He gave up just 1 hit but walked 4.
South Bend beat Great Lakes 7-4. The Loons collected only 5 hits in the loss. Thompson and Biddison homered. Biddisons was a 3-run shot. Romero took the loss; he went 5 innings and gave up 3 runs.
Rancho beat San Jose, 7-4. The Quakes had 7 hits, but 5 of their 7 runs came in on homers from Hope, 2-run shot and Decker, 3-run shot. Both were # 9 of the year for the hitters. Makarewich got the win.
Around the League
The rosters expand to 28 tomorrow and some teams have already announced some players they plan on activating from the IL. Rockies are calling up Ty Blach. The Padres are expected to bring Elias Diaz up. Phillies activated Jose Alvarado. Cubs expected to activate Jordan Hicks from the 60-day IL tomorrow. Yankees doing the same for Anthony Rizzo. Cardinals are activating Steven Matz. And for you college football fans, UCLA squeaked by Hawaii, 16-13. USC plays tomorrow. College football needs to end the travesty of Top 25 teams playing the likes of Akron. There were three games today that the opposition was shut out by 52 points or more. Not a good look for football.
Born June 14th, 1948, in Los Angeles California. AKA The Bear
At least the Ducks struggled.
Joe Kelly, placed on the 15-day Injured List due to right shoulder inflammation.
I hope we have seen the last of Kelly..
A really entertaining win today, from the epic MV3 beginning to the all-hands-on-deck finish, with Casparius making his debut. And after the rough first inning. Stone was solid.
There was some good defense on both sides… and a bit of bad from Teo. Andt the offense delivered 16 hits, with Edman’s single the biggest.
Roberts seemed to make all the right moves. Every position player contributed to win.
As Orel said on the telecast: A great team victory!
If we can somehow split the last 2 games of this series we would be in excellent shape. If we win both we would bury the D-Back right there.
Roberts managed a good game however I did not like when he pinch hit for Muncy with Kike and the bases loaded. I would never ever pinch hit for MM in that situation. Never! Kike made up for his three swing and miss at bat when he laid down a perfect bunt in the 9th setting up Edman for the game winner eventually.
Shout out to both Honeywell and Casparius. Much needed innings with Casparius pitching a flawless 1-2-3 to get his first victory. Doing it in such a pressure cooker spot says a lot about the young man!
Wrobleski today and Pages coming up too.
Go Dodgers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Great win last night. I was somewhat pessimistic going into AZ thinking we might lay down and play poorly. Would love a series sweep but 3 out 4 is a good thing and we would leave AZ with a 6 game lead with 24 games to play and zero head-to-head games against the D-Backs remaining.
Bats have come alive and will need to remain so. Love the back-to-back-to back HR’s to start the game, but didn’t like the four runs Stone gave right back in the first inning. He did settle down and give the staff five innings, although I think he could have pitched the 6th inning.
Wrobo today and I hope he can have a good outing. Needs to throw strikes, keep the ball in the ballpark and avoid walks. Imagine we’ll see Barnes and either Kike or CT3 in the starting line-up today.
Edman is a player.
Lookingat todays game: Only on ROKU. Not even MLB.TV has it live. So I will wait until tomorrow to watch it there in the archive section.
Can Honeywell and Casparius back up Wrobleski ? Can both be up again today ?
Could be huge if Wrobleski struggles early and the Dodgers in need of innings.
Go Dodgers!!!!!!!!!!
Ironic: If Freddie Freeman just went on the IL like he probably should have when the hairline fracture happened, the Dodgers wouldn’t have had to DFA Heyward…
One last time….
TOMMY, TOMMY, TOMMY, TOMMY!!!
I’ll say this — When Marte and Walker get back from the IL, the Snakes will have quite a fearsome line-up. So regardless of this series, Arizona will be a team to be reckoned with in the post-season.
As far as I’m concerned the series is already a success. Those two
games are demoralizing for Arizona
I give Stone a lot of credit for hanging in there. Sometimes our defense makes a hard situation much more difficult. Stone got postseason experience last night.
Why in the world would you pinch hit for Muncy? Literally no other team would do that IMO. Unbelievable.
Thank goodness Phillips is back in his groove. Great win.
Glad the game is on early enough so I can watch USC-LSU.
Interesting game. Not particularly well played by either team. 2 unearned given up by Arizona, an error by Muncy, a misplay by Teo that wasn’t ruled an error but most certainly was, Dodgers 3 for 13 WRISP, and Stone with 5 earned in 5. What I will remember most is the incredible 3 straight home runs on 3 pitches to start the game, never happened before and will never happen again Then a few minutes later the Dodgers were behind 4-3. Weird.
Yes, this Arizona team is going to look even better when they get their starters back. Nobody knows for sure what might be next for the Dodgers. But I figure if they score 8 every day they should be ok.
Louisiana? No. I went there once. Once. I have no idea what the outcome might be but I’m a SoCal sports rooter so …. Go Trojans. LSU is favored but only by 4. I don’t know why but I find that surprising. UCLA and Oregon didn’t exactly impress last night. Wonder how good the Rams will be.
Dbacks favored today. I got nothing on here until the SC game. Maybe I’ll try to finish that book I haven’t started yet.
Dodgers have not yet announced the two additions to the roster.
Wrobleski and Grove both sucked.
Pages is looking like a permanent platoon player, but it’s still early in his career and I might be wrong. I wonder why Doc is giving Pages a long runway but platooned Outman right off the bat this year. Pages has a worse slashline right now against RHP than Outman ended up with last year against LHP. Either way I’m glad Pages got called up.
I’m surprised in a good way about Edman, but he’s all about contact and very little power. When guys like that go into an extended slump, they have nothing unlike a power guy that goes into an extended slump. The power guy will at least hit however many home runs during that slump and home runs are automatic runs for the team.
Kiermaier sucked again. 0 for 4 with 2 strikeouts. 15 strikeouts in 45 at bats since being a Dodger. That should please the strikeout haters.
I figured going in if we won 2 of 4 we should be happy. Of course everyone wants more but 2 of 4 holds serve. The dbacks have exposed our biggest weakness our starting pitching. They are scoring more runs than anybody and playing at home. Kershaw injury put the whole staff in a hole. Even though wrobleski got shelled he still went over 5. I would not have sent last nights guy Casparius down for Grove. Grove doesn’t belong on the roster. Bring Henriquez up for a look. He has has 5 straight scoreless appearances at Oklahoma City. I believe Arizona is peaking right now and I don’t think we are peaking offensively or pitching wise. A win tomorrow would be great but if not we got the same 4 game lead with 4days off the calendar. In 2 weeks we might have a full rotation. Will we have enough time for Glasnow n Yamamoto? If not this series didn’t mean much anyway.
There was a topic if Dodgers falther in first round and get bounced out of the playoffs is Dave Robert’s job safe. Here’s some managers that I thought eoukd be good choices to replace Roberts. Dave Martiniz Nationals manager, Skip Shumaker Marlins Manager, Joey Cora Red Sox manager, former manager Mike Matharty of Cardinsls and Royals, or Terry Lovello of tge Diamondbacks. If Didgers could get any of these guys tgen they would have a better chance at a world series then with Roberts. My choice woukd be Dave Martinez because he won a world series knows how to control a locker room and manages a game very well and he seems to alway get rookies to play very well in washington just think if he has a franchise that gets him players every year. That would be my choice.