Dodger blues again
Los Angeles stretches its winning streak over Colorado to 12 straight
It wasn’t another walk-off win for the Dodgers over the Rockies, but that was a minor technicality.
The Dodgers scored four runs in the ninth inning off struggling closer Wade Davis to win 12-8 at Coors Field Thursday night, extending their winning streak over the Rockies to 12 games. The killer blow was a two-out, three-run, pinch-hit home run by Kike Hernandez on Davis’ 2-2, 95.6 mph fastball. Davis’ ERA now stands at 6.00.
“I was trying to get a fastball down and away. I hadn’t thrown one for a strike yet, but it’s a pitch I left over the middle,” Davis said.
Thursday’s late-game drama came less than a week after the Dodgers swept three games in Los Angeles, winning all three via walk-off home runs. For the Rockies, this loss was just as painful.
Colorado’s 12-game skid vs. the Dodgers is the second-longest to one team in franchise history. Only Atlanta dominated Colorado more, winning 16 straight in 1993-94, the first two seasons of the Rockies’ existence.
“I think it’s important in the sense that eventually we are going to have to beat the Dodgers in the playoffs,” Rockies center fielder Charlie Blackom said. “If we want to be successful, we will have to beat the Dodgers to get there. Until we get to the playoffs, it doesn’t matter so much what the head-to-head matchup is.”
Rockies manager Bud Black doesn’t expect the streak to continue.
“The worm is going to turn,” he said following the loss.
Thursday night was baseball’s version of a war of attrition; last pitcher
standing wins. In this case, it was L.A. closer Kenley Jansen. In a game that featured seven home runs (six by the Dodgers) and 33 combined hits, Jansen escaped with a scoreless ninth. But even that didn’t come easy, because the Rockies had men on second and third when he struck out Garrett Hampson to stop the madness.
On a hot June night, this seesaw affair — in front of a sellout crowd of crowd 47,452 — had casual fans jumping out their seats at all of the fireworks, while baseball purists no doubt shook their bewildered heads at the carnage.
The Dodgers took an 8-7 lead in the seventh on Max Muncy’s tworun homer off Jairo Diaz, but the Rockies tied the game in the bottom of the frame on Ryan McMahon’s solo rocket to center fielder, a 479-footer off Yimi Garcia.
Lost in the dust of another loss to L.A. was the performance of Blackmon, who’s in line to be picked as a possible All-Star Game reserve.
Blackmon batted 3-for-5 with two RBIs and came up a home run short of the cycle. Blackmon had reached base in all 27 games he’s played at Coors Field this season, where he’s batting .458 and has swatted 14 of his 18 home runs.
Colorado starter Peter Lambert is discovering something that every pitcher who’s ever taken the mound in LoDo has learned the hard way.
If pitches aren’t executed with precision and are not kept low in the zone, Coors Field is an angry beast that eats pitchers whole. Lambert pitched 4 M innings, giving up five runs on nine hits.
“I needed to throw down at the knees or up in the zone. I was leaving pitches thigh-high tonight,” Lambert said.
All five of those runs came via the long ball: back-to-back solo blasts by Cody Bellinger and Muncy in the second; a two-run shot by Alex Verdugo in the fifth; and a solo line drive to right field by Justin Turner in the fifth. Bellinger’s home run bounced out of left fielder David Dahl’s glove and over the wall.
Lambert, the 22-year-old rookie, has an overall ERA of 6.57, but owns a 9.95 ERA in three starts at Coors Field.
Not that Dodgers starter Walker Buehler did any better against The Beast.
Last Friday at Dodger Stadium, he threw the first complete game of his career, giving up two runs on three hits and striking out a career-high 16. The Rockies rocked Buehler for seven runs on 13 hits across 5 M innings. Patrick Saunders: psaunders@denverpost.com or @psaundersdp