LOS ANGELES — The Dodgers needed steady, and for a stretch of this one, steady was hard to find. Wild pitches gifted an early lead, two home runs erased it just as fast, and a game that opened with three runs on almost nothing threatened to slip away by the middle innings. Then, with the score knotted and the eighth inning up for grabs, Mookie Betts did what Mookie Betts does. A single up the middle, Tommy Edman racing around from second, and the Dodgers had the lead back for good. Los Angeles 4, Colorado 3, a series win secured the hard way.
A first inning nobody drew up
Nobody scripted this start, and that’s what made it fun. Gabriel Hughes, making just his second big league appearance and first career start, opened the game by uncorking wild pitch after wild pitch, and the Dodgers cashed in without needing to square up a single ball. Edman scored on one. Betts and Freddie Freeman advanced into scoring position on two more.
Then Kyle Tucker made sure none of it went to waste, lining a single into left to bring both runners home. Three runs, one real hit, and some insurance for Roki early.
It didn’t stay that way for long.
Karros and Julien turn it into a fight
Sasaki has had a rough stretch lately, and the second inning showed exactly why. Kyle Karros got things started with a two-run blast to left center, and two batters later Edouard Julien matched him with a solo shot of his own to right. Just like that, a laugher was a one-run game.
By the third, Mickey Moniak’s sacrifice fly brought Brett Sullivan home to tie it at three, and a night that opened with three easy runs had turned into a fight.
Sasaki steadied himself after the rocky second, working around traffic and keeping Colorado off the board the rest of his outing, but the Dodgers offense went cold right along with him, and the middle innings passed with the game still knotted up.
Mookie delivers when it matters most
The Dodgers finally broke through in the eighth, and it came from exactly the hitter you’d want up in that spot. With Edman aboard, Betts lined a single to center that brought him around to score, the go-ahead run crossing the plate on a swing that looked almost effortless.
It’s the kind of at-bat that won’t make a highlight reel, no bat flip, no admiring the flight of the ball, just a professional hitter doing his job when his team needed a run more than anything else.
Betts has quietly turned his season around since coming back from an oblique injury, and Wednesday night was another reminder of why Dave Roberts trusts him in the middle of this lineup no matter what the batting average says.
The bullpen locks it down
From there, it was about finishing the job. The Dodgers turned to their relievers to protect a one-run lead in the late innings, and Colorado’s best chances came and went without doing any real damage. Max Muncy’s lone misplay at third was the only blemish on an otherwise clean night in the field, a welcome sight one day after errors sank the Dodgers in the series’ second game.
When the final out landed, Los Angeles had answered Tuesday’s meltdown with a response that mattered more than the box score, taking the rubber match and the series from a Rockies team that had given them fits for three straight nights.
The win pushes the Dodgers to 60-33, still comfortably atop the NL West and the only team in baseball with 60 wins. More than the standings, though, this one was about weathering a game that could have easily slipped away. The Dodgers gave up a three-run lead, watched Sasaki get rocked in the second, and still found a way, because when it mattered most, they had the guy who usually delivers standing at the plate.
Up next
The Dodgers stay home to open a three-game set against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday night at Dodger Stadium, first pitch set for 10:10 p.m. ET, with Shohei Ohtani taking the mound.
