SAN FRANCISCO — The Dodgers have gotten again to the fundamentals this week, preaching the significance of the little issues in each day hitters’ conferences, in-game dugout conversations and even simulated drills in early batting observe periods.
After a 2 ½ month hunch over the second half of the season, they had been trying to find a extra reliable type of offense. Like simplifying their strategy on the plate. Shortening up swings and utilizing the large a part of the sector with two strikes. Capitalizing on situational alternatives with runners on base. And ensuring that, amid a resurgence from their rotation, they had been discovering methods to extra persistently manufacture runs.
This weekend in San Francisco, they lastly loved the fruits of these labors, blowing out the Giants 10-2 on Sunday to win a three-game collection and stay 2 ½ video games up within the Nationwide League West standings.
“Quality of at-bat, winning pitches, using the whole field, not punching [out] — I think all those things, you know it’s in there,” supervisor Dave Roberts mentioned, after the Dodgers racked up 18 hits, labored six walks and scored in six of their 9 journeys to the plate.
“We’ve seen it. Maybe not with the consistency we would’ve liked. But when you’re facing really good arms, to see us do what we did… it’s certainly encouraging.”
Certainly, coming off a 13-run outburst Saturday night time, the Dodgers picked up proper the place they left off at Oracle Park on Sunday afternoon, slowly sucking the life out of a just lately resurgent Giants staff making an attempt to sneak into the playoffs.
Teoscar Hernández continued a latest surge with a team-high 4 hits, making him 11 for his final 24. Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Michael Conforto every had three knocks, with Conforto’s day getting his batting common again to .200. As a staff, the Dodgers mixed for a whopping 16 singles whereas forcing 207 pitches from the Giants’ employees of arms. And most superb, they did it with Shohei Ohtani reaching base solely as soon as, and that didn’t even occur till his sixth at-bat within the high of the ninth.
“It’s quality at-bats, quality outs, moving guys over, getting sac flies, bringing defenses in if you move them over,” Freeman mentioned. “It creates more traffic, more things that are able to happen on the baseball field. Just think the quality of at-bats have been really good over the last week.”
The onslaught began within the second inning, when two walks and a Freeman single loaded the bases, establishing Kiké Hernández for a sacrifice fly. It continued within the third, when a pair of productive outs (plus a bobbled floor ball from San Francisco third baseman Matt Chapman) turned singles from Betts and Teoscar Hernández into one other hard-earned run.
Then, within the fifth, all of it culminated in a four-run rally, one which knocked Giants starter Robbie Ray out of the sport, and turned a low-scoring affair right into a collection rubber-match rout.
Freeman lined a double to proper subject, after Betts walked and Teoscar Hernández once more singled. Conforto got here off the bench for a two-run, pinch-hit, bases-loaded single that he managed to slap previous a drawn-in infield. A run-scoring balk from reliever Joel Peguero added to the deluge, which included a pair of walks from Tommy Edman and Ben Rortvedt.
The Dodgers’ Tyler Glasnow pitched into the seventh inning on Sunday to select up his second win in as many begins.
(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Related Press)
Within the sixth, what was already a 6-1 lead was stretched just a little additional, with Miguel Rojas’ two-run single — with the bases loaded as soon as extra — placing the Dodgers’ sixth win in seven on ice. The Dodgers nonetheless added extra runs in each the eighth and ninth, giving them their first back-to-back double-digit run totals since all the best way again on the finish of April.
“It’s definitely the kind of baseball we want to be playing down the stretch and for the rest of the season,” Conforto mentioned. “I think we’re doing a lot of the little things right. That’s kind of been the theme as we finish up here.”
All of it represented a brand new look from the Dodgers’ star-studded offense, with solely one in every of their 23 runs the final two days requiring a ball to go over the fence.
For a lot of the 12 months, the staff has been overly reliant on house runs, scoring by way of the lengthy ball on the fifth-highest share within the majors (45%) on the finish of play Friday. Throughout their second-half slide, that dynamic had prevented them from working round accidents and mechanical flaws from a lot of the lineup, or discovering other ways to construct huge innings and grasp crooked numbers.
Therefore, their latest re-emphasis on extra reliable fundamentals — permitting them to paper-cut an opposing pitching employees to demise in a means that’s usually for fulfillment in October.
“When you can be able to do it, and know you can do it, as we’re leading up to that point [of the playoffs], it definitely is a big confidence booster,” Freeman mentioned. “We don’t have to rely on the two-run, three-run home run all the time. I think that was just big. The last week, [this is] what we’ve been trying to do. And we’ve been able to actually do it in the games.”
The offense wasn’t the one constructive signal Sunday.
On the mound, Tyler Glasnow was in a position to calm down after wanting annoyed along with his command early, when he walked 4 batters (and hit one other) in his first three innings. At some extent he has so typically spiraled in his up-and-down Dodgers tenure, the right-hander as an alternative discovered a rhythm by retiring 10 in a row, managing to pitch into the seventh in a 6 ⅔ inning, one-run outing.
“It’s encouraging,” mentioned Glasnow, who has a 3.06 ERA on the season and a 2.66 mark since coming back from a shoulder damage in July “Since I got back from the IL, it’s been easier to kind of put [those kind of struggles] out of my head and go compete. If my stuff sucks, it’s kind of whatever. Just compete, try to get in the zone, get some weak contact. It’s helpful.”
It led to the type of efficiency the Dodgers are banking on from their rotation within the playoffs. That is nonetheless a staff that, at its core, must be carried by its pitching.
The one means that power will matter, nonetheless, is that if the lineup can discover some long-awaited consistency. This weekend, indicators of it lastly arrived. All the pieces the Dodgers had been preaching eventually got here to fruition.
“As we come down to the end [of the season, we’re] just kind of recognizing what it is that really puts us in the right spot to win games,” Conforto mentioned. “It’s go time now, and we got to do all those things if we want to get to where we want to get to.”
